Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart

Background

Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart was born on November 17, 1899, in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, Germany. He had two sisters and brother.

Education

Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart moved to Hanover in 1919 to study architecture and sculpture at the School of Arts and Crafts and the College of Technology.

Career

Circa 1920, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart began to paint, employing a purely nonobjective vocabulary that he continued to use throughout his career. While in Hanover, Vordemberge-Gildewart met El Lissitzky (who eventually encouraged him to experiment with the concepts of Russian Suprematism), Kurt Schwitters, Jean Arp, and Theo van Doesburg, who invited him to join De Stijl in 1924. In 1925 he participated in the Paris exhibition L’art d’aujourd’hui, which featured a strong De Stijl presentation, and in 1927, Vordemberge-Gildewart, Schwitters, Hans Nitzschke, and Carl Buchheister formed the avant-garde group Die Abstrakten Hannover, championing abstraction in their region.

Vordemberge-Gildewart’s first solo exhibition was held in 1929 at the Galerie Povolozky in Paris. He moved from Hanover to Berlin in 1936, seeking refuge from the cultural censure of the Nazi regime, which labeled modern art as “degenerate art” (entartete Kunst). The Nazi Party of Munich displayed Vordemberge-Gildewart’s work in its Exhibition of Degenerate Art in 1937, and later confiscated it based on the claim that it was un-German. Under such pressures, the artist left Germany for Switzerland, and shortly thereafter traveled to Amsterdam on the occasion of the 1938 exhibition Abstracte Kunst organized by the Stedelijk Museum. He remained in Amsterdam during its years of German occupation and eventually became a Dutch citizen. In addition to painting and sculpture, Vordemberge-Gildewart was active in typographical design and the literary arts, publishing a volume of poetry in 1940 and founding the Amsterdam-based publishing house Duwaer in 1942.

From 1934 through the 1940s, he used color, form, and contrast to investigate the possibility of visual equilibrium among geometrically unequal components. Works like Composition No. 96 (1935) demonstrate his dedication to geometric abstraction with an emphasis on diagonal form. Often creating multiple versions of the same work, the artist would reconfigure the primary elements to investigate each component’s role in the composition. He also experimented with materials such as sand to create a textural quality that he designated rauh, or “rough.”

In 1952 Vordemberge-Gildewart instructed on the use of color as an architectural element at the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in Rotterdam. He became head of the department of Visual Communication at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (Ulm School of Design) in Ulm, Germany in 1954.

Achievements

• Friedrich's first paintings were notable for their geometry and tendency towards non-figuration, which would be a constant feature throughout his artistic career. In 1953, he received an award at the São Paulo Bienal. Today the works of Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart can be found in the most important museum collections throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. At the Museum in Wiesbaden, there is an archive devoted to the artist. It holds the largest institutional collection of Vordemberge-Gildewart’s works.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Composition No. 37

    1927

  • Season's greeting card

    1968

  • Composition No. 56

  • Composition No. 15

    1925

  • unknown title

  • Composition No.41

    1927

  • Composition No. 208

  • Composition No. 116

    1940

  • Composition No. 204

    1955

  • Composition No. 211

    1958

  • Composition No. 194

    1953

  • unknown title

  • unknown title

  • unknown title

  • Composition No. 141

  • Composition No. 212

    1960

  • Composition No. 199

  • Collage No. 2

    1956

  • unknown title

  • unknown title

  • Composition No. 144

Membership

Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart was a member of the De Stijl group alongside Mondrian and van Doesburg in 1925 and of Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square), an abstract artist’s group organized by Michel Seuphor. In 1932 he joined the Abstraction-Création group, founded to promote abstraction during a resurgence of representational art in the 1920s.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Willy Rotzler: "The authentic colour artist amongst the constructivist painters."

Connections

In 1932 Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart married Ilse Leda.

Spouse:

Ilse Leda

Sister:

Marie Vordemberge-Gildewart

Sister:

Luise Vordemberge-Gildewart

Brother:

August Vordemberge-Gildewart

Friend:

Kurt Schwitters

References

• Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart: Nothing and Everything
• Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart: Retrospektive/exposición retrospectiva/retrospective : IVAM Centre Julio González, 4. Dezember 1996-9. Februar 1997 ... 1997 (German, English and Spanish Edition)