3949 - Arthur Degner, Portrait of a Man

Arthur Degner, Portrait of a Man A portrait of a man, almost filling the frame, gazing towards the viewer; mixed media (charcoal, watercolour and opaque paints) on paper, 1960-70, stamped on the reverse ‘From the estate of Artur Degner’, minor signs of ageing, framed with a passe-partout and behind glass, passe-partout dimensions approx. 48 x 36 cm. Artist information: also known as Artur Degner, German painter, graphic artist, draughtsman and sculptor (1888, Gumbinnen, East Prussia - 1972, Berlin-Tempelhof), spent his childhood in Tilsit; studied from 1906 to 1908 at the Königsberg Academy under Ludwig Dettmann and Otto Heichert; moved to Berlin in 1909 and was supported by Paul Cassirer, Max Liebermann and Lovis Corinth; spent time in Paris in 1910; from 1911 a member of the Berlin Secession and its chairman from 1931 to 1933; from 1913 a board member of the Free Secession Berlin, 1920-25: Professor at the Königsberg Academy; from 1925: Professor at the University of Fine Arts (HBK) and worked as a freelance artist in Berlin; member of the Nidden [Nida] artists’ colony, In 1934, banned from working and exhibiting; in 1939, expelled from the Reich Chamber of Culture; from 1940 to 1943, worked as a supply teacher at the grammar school in Neukölln; in 1943, his Berlin studio was destroyed and he moved to Silesia, In 1944, conscripted for fortification work in Poland; at the end of 1945, reappointed as a professor and worked at the Berlin University of the Fine Arts until 1956; received various honours, including the Dürer Prize in 1929, the Villa Romana Prize in 1936, which included a stay in Florence, and the Federal Cross of Merit in 1969; submitted works to the art exhibitions in Königsberg from 1913 to 1943; was a member of the German Artists’ Association in Weimar, the German Werkbund, the Reich Association of Visual Artists of Germany and, from 1937, the Association of Berlin Artists; he worked in Berlin. Source: Vollmer, Dressler, Saur and Wikipedia.