Teo Otto
Teo Otto ( born February 4, 1904 in Remscheid, † June 9, 1968 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German stage designer.
Life and work
His equipment for Gustaf of Faust, Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage, Karajan's interpretation of Der Rosenkavalier, the world premieres of pieces by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch at the Schauspielhaus Zurich dominated the international theater history.
Teo Otto worked in the course of his life for more than 800 productions.
" Teo Otto - to remember a name ," wrote the critic Alfred Kerr 1930 the young stage of the legendary Kroll Opera in Berlin. There he had as an assistant director | met important representatives of the European avant-garde wizard Ewald Dülberg who were invited in Otto Klemperer Opera experiment as a set designer. Teo Otto worked with Giorgio de Chirico, László Moholy -Nagy and Oskar Schlemmer, met Igor Stravinsky and Bertolt Brecht know and met Else Lasker-Schüler. In 1930, he was only 27 years with theatrical director of the Prussian State Theatre. 1933 released him, the Nazis, as Teo Otto was their stated political opponents. He emigrated to Switzerland and was responsible stage of the legendary Zurich Schauspielhaus, where he remained until his death in 1968. Here he also designed stage sets for several premieres of Bertolt Brecht, so 1941 Mother Courage and Her Children. He was invited back Brecht also work at the Berliner Ensemble. The poem Theo, do not vacillate Brecht wrote in 1956 for him.
After the Second World War he was the most sought after set designers of the German-language theater, and has worked for the Salzburg Festival and the Vienna Burgtheater. In addition, he worked for international stages in New York, Paris, London, Milan, Israel and Syracuse. He worked with Gustav Lindemann, Günther Rennert, Fritz Kortner, Kurt Hirschfeld, Oscar Fritz Schuh and Giorgio Strehler. His work for Harry Buckwitz were decisive for the West German Brecht reception. Exciting new routes went his classic outfits for Karl -Heinz Stroux and Leopold Lindtberg. He also designed stage sets for opera productions by Herbert von Karajan (about Il trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi for, the Salzburg Festival in 1962, and later Vienna State Opera ). He was ( among his pupils eg Immendorff and Georg Klusemann ) at the Kassel Art Academy from 1953 to 1958 and at the Dusseldorf Art Academy from 1959 until his death Professor and Head of the Stage class. In addition to his stage, he left as a painter and draftsman an important artistic work.
In his obituary it was said of him: " There are aesthetic and sober abstracting, there are lush picturesque, reveling in dunkelsilbernem or dunkelgoldenem Baroque decorations by Teo Otto. He poured a veritable cornucopia of shapes and pictures of our theater. "
The " Teo Otto Theater " Remscheid, named after him since 30 September 2001 and the Galerie der Stadt Remscheid conducted in 2000/2001, together with the Theatre Museum of the City of Dusseldorf and the Cultural Office of Wuppertal an extensive retrospective of Teo Otto's work through.
Teo Otto was, inter alia, 13 years with the Austrian Chamber of actress Gusti Wolf ( 1912-2007 ) dating, which oversaw parts of his artistic estate after his death and made available to the public. He lived the last years together with the Frankfurt designer and gallerist Renate Höhmann, with whom he has a daughter. During this time he started to paint again. In Teo Otto Archive Höhmann family can be found, among others, his oil paintings as well as central stage pictures of his last creative years.