H. W. Janson

Horst W. Janson ( as an author mostly HW Janson, also Peter Janson, full name Horst Janson Woldemar; born October 4, 1913 in St. Petersburg, † 30 September 1982) was a German - American art historian, curator and professor.

Life

Janson was born in St. Petersburg. His parents were originally from Scandinavia. The October Revolution prompted the family to move to Germany in 1917. In Hamburg Janson attended the Wilhelm-Gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1932 with the Abitur. He studied in Munich in 1932 and from 1933 in Hamburg, with Erwin Panofsky until his emigration. Nazism was hostile to Janson and changed his first name Horst in response to the Horst Wessel song in Peter from. For political reasons, he emigrated in 1935 with support from Alfred Barr in the United States and continued his studies at Harvard University continues; parents and a brother who fell in 1943, remained in Germany.

At Harvard University put Janson 1938, the Master's examination. He was from 1936 to 1937 assistant at the Fine Arts Department at the Worcester Art Museum from 1936 to 1938 adjunct professor and lecturer and 1938-1941 Lecturer at Iowa State University. In 1941, he married Dora Heineberg. In the same year Janson was appointed in 1941 as Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. With the dissertation The Sculptured Michelozzo di Bartolommeo Works of Janson in 1941 or 1942 his doctorate. His son Anthony was born in 1943; In the same year Janson received U.S. citizenship.

At Washington University, he was a member of the Art Collection Committee, the 1945 task was to reshape the extensive art collection. Janson was since 1944 curator of collections; He was the driving force for the selection and purchase of modern art. The University auctioned not in the collection matching works. Among the works was sold with $ 23,000 Frederic Remington's Dash away hey Timber of 1889 as revenue camper, along with other works from the 19th century by artists such as Rosa Bonheur, Dwight William Tryon or Horatio Walker.

With the acquisition of more than 40 prints, paintings, and sculptures, mostly on Jansons proposal, founded the Art Collection Committee 1945/1946, the first collection of modern art at the University in St. Louis. These included works by Georges Braque, Theo van Doesburg, Max Ernst and Joan Miró. American representative of abstract expressionism like Jackson Pollock refused Janson, as he renounced works of German New Objectivity. 1949 Janson moved to the New York University, where he taught at the Institute of Fine Arts.

Janson published a number of essays on the Renaissance and modern art, including the Magazine of Art His major work was the 1962 published book History of Art, which until 1982 had a circulation of 2.5 million copies and has been published in 14 languages.

Janson died on September 30, 1982, when he was traveling in a train from Zurich to Milan.

Aftereffect

The exhibition " Exile and Modernism - HW Janson and the collection of the Washington University in St. Louis " was shown in Germany in 2005 /2006. Exhibition venues were the Opel Villas in Rüsselsheim, the Anger Museum in Erfurt, the Kunsthalle St. Annen in Lübeck and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Freiburg. The exhibition included works by artists such as Max Beckmann, Lyonel Feininger and Jean Hélion to Jackson Pollock.