Clément Moreau

Clément Moreau ( * March 26, 1903 Koblenz am Rhein, † December 27, 1988 in Sirnach ), whose real name is Joseph Carl Meffert, was a politically and socially committed a graphic designer and artist. His main work is considered the Linolschnittfolge " night over Germany ."

Life

Josef Carl Meffert was born on March 26, 1903 out of wedlock in Koblenz. After a difficult childhood, he spent the years 1914-1918 as a pupil care in two hospitals in Westphalia. Several breakaways failed.

In 1927 he moved to Berlin and arrived there, inter alia, with Käthe Kollwitz, Emil Orlik, Heinrich Vogeler, Otto Nagel and John Heartfield in contact. Thanks also to their extraction, Meffert her first graphic works as well as book and magazine illustrations for the working press. With Sonja Marchlewska, wife of Heinrich Vogeler, at the time the drug addicts Käthe Kollwitz had referred to a passionate relationship relaxing. 1928 created the Linolschnittzyklen unemployed youth and your sister; in the years 1928/1929 follows the twenty -part cycle of remedial training, showing Mefferts experiences in caring.

Early thirties stayed Meffert often in the Ticino land and artist cooperative Fontana Martina on. After the seizure of power by the National Socialists in Germany he visited Berlin in early 1933 for the last time and barely escaped the Gestapo to escape to Switzerland. Until 1935 Meffert lived as an illegal political refugee in Switzerland and became the independent Clément Moreau. To escape his impending arrest, traveled Moreau 1935 in Argentine exile, where he lived until 1961 and worked. There emerged in the years 1937/1938 one of the most important works of the anti-fascist exile art: the Linolschnittzyklus night over Germany.

The political situation in Argentina 1961 Moreau's forced to return to Switzerland. Here he lived in St. Gallen and Zurich, among others, was worked as a theater artist and teacher of drawing. Only in the 1970s became Moreau's artistic work gradually public attention; it was followed by exhibitions and honors such as the Cultural Prize of the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions in 1987 and the Culture Prize of the German Trade Union Federation in 1988.

Clément Moreau died December 27, 1988 in Sirnach.

Work

Directory of Linolschnittzyklen and drawings:

• Hamburg

• Cement

• Your sister

• Unemployed youth

• Correctional education

• Proletarian Art

• Diary of the spy Edward Kent

• 20 Grabados de Clément Moreau

• Contra el nazismo y el fascismo

• El viento que siembra recoge temperate stades

• Mein Kampf

• " La comedia humana " / "Night over Germany "

• El chaco

• Argentina

• The Bridge in the Jungle

• " A love story "