4144 - Edmund Kesting, Summer on the Darß

Edmund Kesting, Summer on the Darß Abstract landscape depiction in light colours, mixed media (watercolour and oil pastels) on lightweight card, c. 1960, signed ‘E. Kesting", minor signs of ageing, mounted in a passe-partout and framed behind glass, sheet dimensions approx. 35.5 x 50 cm. Artist information: German painter, graphic artist and photographer; studied initially at the School of Applied Arts from 1911 to 1922, later at the Dresden Academy; served in the First World War from 1915 to 1918, after which he resumed his studies at the Dresden Academy as a master student of Otto Gussmann; in 1919 he founded the private art school ‘Der Weg - Schule für Gestaltung’; from 1921 he collaborated with, and from 1923 exhibited at, Herwarth Walden’s ‘Sturm’; maintained contacts with Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky and Alexander Archipenko; from 1925, engaged in photography and experimental photographic techniques (including multiple exposures), 1926: Founded the Berlin art school ‘Der Weg’ and the ‘Gesellschaft der Sturmfreunde’ in Dresden; now internationally successful, including exhibitions and acquisitions in Moscow and New York; member of the Werkbund; 1933-45: defamed as a ‘degenerate’ painter and banned from painting; he devoted himself entirely to photography, including work as an advertising photographer; 1945: co-founder of the Dresden artists’ group ‘Der Ruf - befreite Kunst’, 1946-47: Professor at the Academy of Applied Arts in Dresden; 1948: Professor at the Berlin-Weißensee Academy of Fine Arts; In 1953, he was dismissed as a result of the ‘formalism controversy’; from 1955, he worked at the University of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg; from 1961, he worked from his summer house in Ahrenshoop and on the Darß and Fischland peninsulas. Source: Dressler, Vollmer and the internet.