Richard Guhr

Richard Guhr ( born September 30, 1873 in Schwerin, † October 27, 1956 in Höckendorf at Dresden; Complete name: Albert Edward Richard Guhr ) was a German painter, sculptor and university teacher.

Life

Guhr father Johann Friedrich Oswald Guhr ( born December 18, 1840 in Dresden) was Grand Duke of Mecklenburg - Hofkapellist court musician (bassoon) in Schwerin, his mother was Helene Auguste Juliane Gallus (* 1847).

Richard Guhr was coined by the former royal residences in Schwerin, Berlin and Dresden. The home belonged to the educated middle classes, who appreciating its origin and education through military service. Guhr served as a one-year volunteer from October 1, 1895 to July 7, 1896 in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg Grenadier - Regiment 89

In the years 1890-1891 Guhr completed a two -year degree at the School of Applied Arts in Dresden and in the years 1892-1893 at the educational establishment of the Museum of Decorative Arts Berlin, among others, Max Friedrich Koch and Alfred Grenander. From 1893 he worked as a decorative painter and draftsman at MJ Bodenstein worked in Berlin and participated in exhibitions from 1896, including the Berlin Trade Fair 1896. In 1901, an exhibition of images Guhr followed in "Art Salon Gurlitt ".

Guhr 1902 artistic collaborator of the architect Bruno Möhring for the design of the German Department at the World's Fair St. Louis, 1904. From 1904 to 1914, he finally had his own apartment and a studio in Berlin- Charlottenburg. To January 1, 1905 Guhr was appointed Professor of bronzes at the School of Applied Arts in Dresden and received on 3 April 1907, the Chair of figure painting and figure drawing. Guhr in 1906 the Dresdner Group The guild at and participated in the III. German Arts and Crafts Exhibition in Dresden in 1906 in part with their own contributions. In 1934 he was appointed professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, but offset at his own request in May 1938 in retirement.

The most prominent student Richard Guhr during his tenure as a professor at the School of Applied Arts in Dresden was from 1910 to 1914, Otto Dix, who took part in the run by Guhr classes in figure drawing and figure drawing. In the class of Decorative Painting by Richard Guhr primarily decorative design and modeling and figural drawing from casts and models was taught. Thus arose 1909/1910 landscapes in the true late Impressionist style (eg look at Radebeul, 1910, View of Dresden -Neustadt, 1910). In the years 1911/1912 Dix also made first attempts at plastic Richard Guhr.

Work

Guhr was known as a sculptor decorative architectural sculpture on the facades and interiors with large orders for figurative bronze castings 1900-1920 for representation projects, including the New Town Hall in Dresden ( "Golden City Hall man " ), the Town Hall Barmen, at the city park bridge at the underground station Berlin- Beautiful mountain and the Hotel Adlon in Berlin.

As a painter Richard Guhr remained largely unknown, although he turned about from 1920 to painting. He is obliged to as " thinking painter ," the new German painting of the Nazarene and Moritz von Schwind and Arnold Böcklin. With his works, he wanted to express that German painting and the Germans regenerate as a cultural and political unity only from the German painting and can act as popular education means, the artistic imagination should be rated as an autonomous myth -creating principle.

The works of Richard Guhr are illustrative of the continuing influence of the picturesque and literary romanticism, the "Triumph of Religion in the Arts " ( Städel Institute in Frankfurt) or " German Parnassus " for the Bochum City Hall. In his paintings, especially in his later work, written 1946-1949 (since 1980 in the Regional Museum Fritzlar ), including the re- painted 1945-1956 torso " Wagner ceremony ", he designed Richard Wagner as a cult figure through his Insbildsetzung Wagner's thought.

In his symbolic images with a preference for utopias and perceived values ​​of the past and the Greco- Germanic myths world Guhr sees in the painting as a fulfiller of Wagner's mission of "Aryan regeneration ". Therefore, in the early 1920s nationalist groupings in Dresden began to see in Guhr a prophet of national renewal. National Socialist Oriented took Guhr images, without its objections, ideologically and politically claim for themselves.

Work

Between 1921 and 1925, Guhr involved with various works of art exhibitions in Dresden and Berlin. Among his better known works include various glass painting for major exhibitions.