Background
Otto Freundlich was born on July 10, 1878 in Stolp, Province of Pomerania, Prussia (present-day Slupsk, Poland). His father, Emil Freundlich, was a director of a transport company.
1931
Otto Freundlich (left) with Heinrich Hoerle, 1931.
Otto Freundlich was born on July 10, 1878 in Stolp, Province of Pomerania, Prussia (present-day Slupsk, Poland). His father, Emil Freundlich, was a director of a transport company.
Initially, Otto studied dentistry before he decided to become an artist. In 1904, he moved to Munich, where he devoted his time to the study of musical theory. Two years later, Freundlich left for Florence to study art history and began painting. In 1907, he studied in Berlin, where he discovered the world of sculpture under the tutelage of Arthur Lewin Funcke.
In 1908, Otto arrived in Paris, where he was welcomed by Rudolf Levy. He stayed in the Bateau-Lavoir ateliers of Montmartre for one year and it was at that time, that he met Picasso, George Braque, Juan Gris, André Salmon and Guillaume Apollinaire. In 1911, Freundlich left for Montparnasse, where he produced his first abstract paintings. During ten years of his stay in Paris, Freundlich traveled often to Berlin and Munich and participated in several exhibitions, including the New Secessionist exhibition, which was held in Berlin between 1910 and 1911.
In 1917, Otto worked for the Die Aktion (the Action), a German literary magazine, which devoted a special edition to his work in September 1918. At that time, he was interested in different media, such as stained glass, tapestry and mosaics. In 1919, together with Max Ernst and Johannes Theodor Baargeld, Freundlich organized the first Dada exhibition in Cologne.
In the early 1920, Freundlich organized a conference on the theme "Transformation of the Visible World". He was extremely active and fought for his beliefs. He also participated in the organization of the International Exhibition of Revolutionary Artists in Berlin.
After 1925, Freundlich lived and worked mainly in France. In 1931, he held his first show at the Galerie de la Renaissance in Paris. In 1934, Otto wrote a theoretical text on painting "Die Wege der Abstrakten" (Paths of Abstract Art). Two years later, in 1936, the painter founded "The Wall", a private art academy, located in his last Paris atelier in rue Denfert Rochereau. At that time, he conceived projects for architectonic sculptures, called "Mountains Sculptures", and exchanged works with Kurt Schwitters.
When World War II broke out, Freundlich was arrested by the French Army and interned in Francillon. In February 1940, he was transferred to Bassens in the Gironde. After his release in May 1940, Otto took refuge with a peasant family in Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet in the Eastern Pyrenees. But some time later, on February 23, 1943, he was denounced and arrested again. On March 4, 1943, Freundlich was deported to Poland and on March 9, 1943, he was assassinated by the Nazis upon his arrival in the Lublin-Maïdenek camp.
A retrospective exhibition of his works was held at the Galerie Rive Droite, Paris, in 1954.
Otto Freundlich understood the formal language of his abstract-tectonic sculpting and painting as symbolic of an ideal community. In it, the individual element is engaged in a dialogue with the whole. Freundlich’s art is thus a call for social renewal, that can only be achieved through a new spiritual direction of the individual.
Quotations: "The artist is a barometer of transformations. He senses them in his acts and his thoughts before they are realised in the world. When he detaches himself from the generally admitted forms and truths, he is executing the edicts of a new reality. All artistic realisations have an inclination: a narrow inclination when it is the safeguard of the artist, a large one when the artist renounces himself and his work opens mental frontiers. A forcing of barriers – social, political, spiritual – begins every historical period. Ours will for the first time accomplish the union of man with the whole earth and will thus change nostalgia and desire for far-away things into something else, certainly much greater, although everywhere within our reach."
Otto was a member of Union des Artistes Allemands Libres. Also, after World War I, he was politically active as a member of the November Group.
In 1930, Otto met Jeanne Kosnick-Kloss, a painter and sculptor, who became his companion.