Walter Kurt Wiemken
Walter Kurt Wiemken ( born September 14, 1907 in Basel, Switzerland, † December 30, 1940 in Castel San Pietro, Breggia Gorge ) was a Swiss painter.
Life
The parents of Walter Kurt Wiemken were German who were naturalized in 1898 in Switzerland and moved to Basel. Wiemken fell ill at the age of four months from polio and was disabled for life and need help. He lived his entire life in his parents' house and also led his art studio there. The father of Wiemken had a Lithografenbetrieb.
In the years 1923 to 1927 was Walter Kurt Wiemken students of the vocational school in Basel. He was taught there in the graphics class artistic Fritz Baumann. Baumann was the founder of the Expressionist group The new life and also conveyed the ideas of the Bauhaus. The illustrations Wiemkens from this period are based on expressionism. During this time, Wiemken connection sought to Artists group red-blue, which consisted of students from Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
In 1927, Wiemken studied the summer semester at the State University of Applied Arts in Munich. He was taught there by Fritz Hellmut Ehmcke and Richard Klein. After the stay in Munich Wiemken went along with Otto Abt on a study trip to Paris. His last expressionist paintings were on this stay. They made almost entirely gloomy street scenes dar. Thereafter, Wiemken dealt with Impressionism. In the years 1928 and 1929 Wiemken traveled with Walter Bodmer and Otto Abt, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship, to the artist Collioure in Roussillon and in the Ticino. These stays remarkable landscape paintings were created. Wiemken and his friends visited Collioure several times to the year 1939.
The observation of the funeral of a girl and the concurrent daily business of a butcher influenced the artistic work of Wiemken sustainable. He then tried to portray the contradictions of events in human life at the same time in his pictures. In the 1930s Wiemkens art was influenced by the works of Serge Brignoni, Kurt Seligmann and Pablo Picasso and the Surrealism. His works were distinguished henceforth by the fact that they represent the sun and dark sides of human life as it were. In 1936, Wiemken took part in the exhibition time problems in Swiss painting and sculpture at the Kunsthaus Zurich.
Wiemken belonged, together with his friends Walter Bodmer and Otto Abt, one of the founders in 1933 founded in protest against the conservative tendencies in Schweizer ( mainly Basel ) Artists and Architects scene group 33 The Group 33 had a clearly anti-fascist orientation. In the years 1936 and 1937, followed by the influence of his friend Walter Bodmer constructivist art. Wiemken traveled to Belgium in 1937 and there he sat apart in the surrealist art of James Ensor.
On December 30, 1940 Wiemken went on a walk and threw it off. His body was not until weeks later, found on 23 January 1941, Breggia gorge near Castel San Pietro.
Wiemkens works that garner international acclaim and exhibited. Wiemkens work were also represented at the documenta 1 in 1955 in Kassel.