Curt Querner

Curt Querner ( born April 7, 1904 in Börnchen in Freital, † March 10, 1976 in Kreischa ) was a painter, a representative of the New Objectivity. All his life he committed to realism in his basic artistic concept.

Cross- agent parents were both deaf; he himself led it to no small part to the fact back that he learned to know the world with the eyes.

After the locksmith apprenticeship and trade school in Freital Querner worked as a locksmith factory in Glashütte, Freital and spells joke.

In 1926 he started at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts to study. He took painting classes at Richard Müller and Otto Dix. His studies he financed by working in a rope factory and as a peddler for Seiler goods. The path from his parents' house in Börnchen Academy of Art in Dresden, he lay back on foot.

In 1930 he finished his studies early and joined the group of artists association and the KPD. From the Communist Party he later came out again, and then never again in a political party.

In 1933 he married Regina Dodel, the sister of his university friend and painter Wilhelm Dodel. In the same year his daughter Yvonne was born. When you visit the exhibition " mirror images of decadence in art," he was arrested and spent three days in detention. He had his first exhibition at the art store cooling in Dresden.

1932-1937 he lived from unemployment welfare, although he painted a picture almost daily. He often worked outdoors, whatever the weather. His subjects were landscapes of Vorerzgebirges to his hometown Börnchen and rural motifs such as farmhouses or farm chores. It also emerged plants for urban designs from the poor suburbs of Dresden. The many portraits he painted again and again for the same models. He could only invite the models that required the least money out of his poverty. There were peasant women and children from his home village Börnchen, but also from the neighborhood of his poor suburban neighborhood. Due to its material needs only a few oil paintings were created during this period. The oil paintings preserved from the 1930s are among his major works. He 's painting technique of realism had acquired and stretched himself in his diaries with Lucas Cranach. His favorite styles of painting were to end of life watercolors and drawings. In watercolors, he developed a wet-on- wet technique, which was characteristic of all his later work.

In 1940 he was drafted into the army, came to Norway in 1943 and 1945 to 1947 in French captivity. In 1947 he returned to his family back to Börnchen because his apartment was bombed Dresden. With his city studio Querner lost a large part of his work.

Even after the return from captivity Querner could only very laborious life of his pictures. End of the 40's significant images were inter alia acquired by the National Gallery in Berlin and Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden. He also got some public contracts for building configuration, and had in the 50s some public exhibitions, but was not admitted to the art exhibition of the GDR in 1953. It was not until the early 60s he was discovered by the official art of the GDR as a proletarian revolutionary artists ( again ). At the same time his artistic recognition increased with the Dresden audience and beyond, as evidenced both in Malaufträgen as well as in sales of its freely created works. Thus at last the lifetime of deprivation was banned.

Querner was an artist who put great importance on independence. The own high standards in terms of artistic quality and personal integrity, he called for an in others. With these requirements, he distanced himself from the State official art and had a severe judgment against his fellow painters.

Throughout his life he was very tight with the Freitaler honorary citizen Heinz Hellmuth - friends (1904, 1994).

In 1971 he was awarded the Käthe Kollwitz Prize, the 1972 National Prize of the GDR.