4145 - Edmund Kesting, Impression of the Darß

Edmund Kesting, Impression of the Darß An abstract view of the open sea with a ship, mixed media on light-weight cardboard, c. 1970, signed ‘Ed. Kesting”, signed again on the reverse, mounted in a passe-partout and framed behind glass, sheet dimensions approx. 14 x 17.5 cm, provenance: Lehr Art Auctions Berlin, 10/2013. 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, with exhibitions and acquisitions in Moscow and New York, amongst other places; 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.