Artist questionnaire

Description

Artist questionnaire completed by Else Meidner with details of her life and career.

[Translation/transcription]

I. LIFE AND WORK DATA

Full name:
Date and Place of Birth:
Art Schools visited:
Dates, Names of Teachers:
Else Meidner
2 September 1901, Berlin
1918 Lützowstrasse Studio of Professor Meyer
1920 Lewin-Funke Studio, Hardenbergstrasse
1923 School of Applied Arts, Prinz Albrecht Strasse
1924 Steinplatz Academy evening course
1925 Lewin-Funke Studio, class of Ludwig Meidner

Year of marriage to L. Meidner: 1927
Son David born 1929 (lives in Erez in Israel)

Advantages connected with education in art schools: influences on further work:
My father (who was a doctor) wouldn’t let me study art, so I ran away from home, to Hamburg, in 1922. Friedrich Adler, tutor at the school of applied arts in Hamburg, wrote to my father and said he wanted to teach me. But my father brought me back and then let me pursue my studies in Berlin. I was often ill, which was a major hindrance to my work.

When started work in personal direction? Name works and dates:
1928 Krankes Mädchen [Sick Girl], painted in Badenweiler, four Schwarzwald landscapes
1929 Mädchen im Pelzmantel [Girl in a Fur Coat], several self-portraits and still lifes, Bild meiner Mutter [Portrait of My Mother], [illegible] and many others. Several sold, several destroyed or lost in migration. Drawings of a very talented youth from around 1918/19 destroyed because L. M. thought they were demonic and that they would make him ill! Destroyed 1925.

Represented in public collections:
Name works and collections
Ben Uri Art Gallery, Museum Tel Aviv, Jewish Museum Berlin, collection of Mr Margulies, collection of Mrs S. Goerz, collection of Mr F. Uri, Collection of Dr Strauss

Prizes, Scholarships, Awards
Käthe Kollwitz scholarship for evening classes at the Academy on Steinplatz.
Prize for engraving from Euphorion Verlag, in Kunstblatt 1928.
Prize for a drawing, Diaspora, from US [Govt].
Scholarship: Conference of Jewish Material [illegible] USA, 1955.

Are you holding a teaching job in an art school:
Name school and dates:

State whether mentioned in any book on art:
Name title of book, page, and illustration, if any
I do not know.
(Who is Who Germany mentions that I have the largest collection of Else Meidners in the world!)

Date and places of journeys abroad:
I don’t like travelling.

Do you belong to a group? (name)

Exhibitions held:
Special exhibition of the Juryfreie, 1932, Berlin
Thirty illustrations and many drawings
Paintings and drawings, Ben Uri Gallery, 1949
Oil paintings and drawings, Frankfurter Kunstkabinett, 1955
Drawings Matthiesen Gallery, 1956


II. STYLISTIC DATA

(a) Describe briefly your own stylistic development, changes of style, themes, etc. State reason why and dates when occurred.
From 1955 to 1957 I made very plastic paintings, only to return quite suddenly (and this was quite torturous for me) to my beginnings, namely to indistinct, colourful, planar painting. I started painting in my own colours from around 1949. I don’t know why; I paint instinctively.

(b) State main sources of inspiration (in England and abroad). Names of artists and art trends, or other influences.

(c) State when arrived at positive appreciation of ‘abstract’ principles of art and why you adopted them.

(d) What is the chief aim of your work, seen
1) aesthetically
2) socially
I am a great admirer of the perfection of Creation. By giving expression to this admiration in my work I glorify the Creator, so that when I am deeply immersed in my work the intensity of it perhaps has the intimacy of a prayer.

Read more