Edmund Kesting was a German photographer, painter and art professor
Education
He studied until 1916 at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts before participating as a soldier in the First World War, upon returning his painting teachers were Richard Müller and Otto Gussmann and in 1919 he began to teach as a professor at the private school Der Weg.
Career
In 1923 he had his first exposition in the gallery Der Sturm in which he showed photograms. When Der Weg opened a new academy in Berlin in 1927, he moved to the capital. Among the artists with whom he interacted are Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky and Alexander Archipenko.
At the end of World World War II he formed part of a Dresden artistic group known as Künstlergruppe der ruf - befreite Kunst (Call to an art in freedom) along with Karl von Appen, Helmut Schmidt-Kirstein and Christoph Hans, among others
In this city he made an experimental report named Dresdner Totentanz (Dance of death in Dresden) as a condemnation of the bombing of the city. In 1955 he began to experiment with chemical painting, making photographs without the use of a camera and only with the use of chemical products such as the developer and the fixer and photographic paper, for which he made exposures to light using masks and templates.
Between 1956 and 1967 he was a professor at the Academy of Cinema and Television of Potsdam. His artistic work was not recognized by the authorities of the German Democratic Republic until 1980, ten years after his death.
Politics
He participated in the controversy between socialist realism and formalism that took place in the German Democratic Republic, therefore his work was not realist and could not be shown in the country between 1949 and 1959.
Membership
Deutscher Werkbund]
In 1946 he was named a member of the Academy of Art in the city.