Max Mannheimer: The Marriage of Colours

ISBN-13: 9783777426372 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 144 str.

Knapp, Gottfried

Opis

A survivor of the Holocaust and three different Nazi concentration camps, Max Mannheimer (1920 2016) spent his life speaking out against the atrocities of the Third Reich. One of the most prominent witnesses of the Holocaust, he won numerous awards for raising public awareness, including the German Cross of Merit and the French Legion of Honor. Beginning in the 1950s, he also worked through the painful memories of what he endured through his art, painting and drawing under the name Ben Jakov, Son of Jakob, taken in memory of his father, who was killed in a concentration camp. Although he produced more than 1,000 paintings and drawings, he never exhibited his work, and this aspect of his life remains little-known.
Max Mannheimer: The Marriage of Colours offers the first look at Mannheimer s incredibly moving body of work. The dynamic, abstract paintings and drawings bear witness to the atrocities of the concentration camps, but they also reflect the joy of an eventually full and meaningful life. A self-taught artist, Mannheimer took exuberant delight in experimentation, and his motto, I marry colors, is evident in his characteristically vivid palette. From among his prolific body of work, Gottfried Knapp has selected seventy-three representative paintings and drawings many of which are published here for the first time and contributed a moving introduction to Mannheimer s life and work.
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Max Mannheimers Oeuvre folgt seinem poetischen Motto "Ich vermähle die Farben". Aus einer vollkommen eigenständigen künstlerischen Position heraus hat er mit großer Experimentierfreude seit 1955 ein diverses Werk von weit über tausend Arbeiten geschaffen. Signiert sind seine dynamischen abstrakten Gemälde und Zeichnungen in Erinnerung an seinen im Konzentrationslager ermordeten Vater mit "ben jakov" (Sohn des Jakob). Sie zeugen sowohl von Schrecken als auch Freude eines ereignisreichen Lebens. Versehen mit einem einleitenden Essay von Gottfried Knapp gibt der Band erstmalig einen Überblick über das im Stillen geschaffene malerische Werk Max Mannheimers.

Recenzje

»Max Mannheimer hat die Malerei ursprünglich schon 1950 als Mittel entdeckt, um seine Erinnerungen und all das Unfassbare, was er erlebt hatte, zu verarbeiten.«
Süddeutsche Zeitung

O autorze

Gottfried Knapp is responsible for architectural reporting as cultural editor of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Munich. He has written on contemporary architecture and urban development in almost all the specialist publications in Germany.