Franz Bronstert
Encyclopedia
Franz Bronstert was a German engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

 and painter
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

.

Life and Art

Franz Bronstert was born to the teacher for arts and music Bernhard Bronstert and his wife Luise (from the Breil-family) in Dorsten.
Before World War I Bronstert visited and finished the superior school for engineers in Hagen
Hagen
Hagen is the 39th-largest city in Germany, located in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is located on the eastern edge of the Ruhr area, 15 km south of Dortmund, where the rivers Lenne, Volme and Ennepe meet the river Ruhr...

. He served during the war in the rank of Lieutenant and later „Rittmeister“ equivalent to Captain. As a prisoner of war at Ripon
Ripon
Ripon is a cathedral city, market town and successor parish in the Borough of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, located at the confluence of two streams of the River Ure in the form of the Laver and Skell. The city is noted for its main feature the Ripon Cathedral which is architecturally...

, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

 he got into contact with artists Fritz Fuhrken and Georg Philipp Wörlen
Georg Philipp Wörlen
Georg Philipp Wörlen was a German painter, particularly associated with Passau, Bavaria, Germany.- Life :...

 and started with his own artistic work. These contacts led to the foundation of the group of artists „Der Fels
Der Fels
Der Fels was group of German Expressionist artists that existed from around 1920 to 1927.-History:The group's origins lay in the meeting of Franz Bronstert, Fritz Fuhrken and Georg Philipp Wörlen in a World War I prisoner of war camp in Ripon, England. Other members of the group were Reinhard...

“ (The Rock) which was later completed by Reinhard Hilker and Carry Hauser
Carry Hauser
Carry Hauser, born Carl Maria Hauser , was an Austrian painter, stage set designer and poet.- Life :Carry Hauser was born in Vienna as Carl Maria Hauser into the family of a civil servant...

.

Past the war he settled in Hagen and made contact with the group around collector Karl Ernst Osthaus
Karl Ernst Osthaus
Karl Ernst Osthaus was an important German patron of avant-garde art and architecture.In 1902, Osthaus founded the Folkwang Museum in Hagen, Germany...

 especially with Christian Rohlfs
Christian Rohlfs
Christian Rohlfs was a German painter, one of the important representatives of German expressionism....

. The latter influenced the work of Bronstert considerably. During this time a life-time friendship with Alfred Kubin
Alfred Kubin
Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin was an Austrian printmaker, illustrator and occasional writer. Kubin is considered an important representative of Symbolism and Expressionism.-Biography:...

 developed. Membership in „Der Fels“ led to numerous exhibitions all over Germany and Austria between 1921 and 1927. Eight portfolios with original prints of “Der Fels” were also published during this time.

His participation in exhibitions of Das Junge Rheinland(Young Rhineland) is also known of as well as participation in the group exhibition of Hagenring at Museum Osnabrück 1929.

Bronstert’s art developed from radical expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

 of the early twenties to a
realistic
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...

 phase and finally to a reformed impressionism as the artist claims himself. Bronstert finds his motifs mostly in nature.

Even though Bronstert mastered several techniques, like oil painting
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...

, drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...

, woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

 it was the watercolour painting that he loved most.

As the financial success was not sufficient to feed a family, Bronstert had married Maria Regina Hedwig Schlickum, a relative of painter Carl Schlickum and writer Ferdinand Freiligrath
Ferdinand Freiligrath
Ferdinand Freiligrath was a German poet, translator and liberal agitator.-Biography:Freiligrath was born in Detmold, Principality of Lippe. His father was a teacher. He left a Detmold gymnasium at 16 to be trained for a commercial career in Soest...

; he took up a job as an engineer without stopping to paint. Four children were born subsequently. The possibility to work as an artist without financial pressure was the reason behind Bronsterts refusal to market himself.

Bronstert was both a technical and artistic talent. He was successful in his job and was a member of the board of VARTA
VARTA
VARTA AG was a company based in Germany manufacturing batteries for global automotive, industrial and consumer markets. A sales slogan was "you're smarter to fit Varta!" in the mid 1990s...

 with several international patents on his record when he retired. Past retirement he concentrated solely on his art again.

Works by Bronstert can be found in the Schneider Collection, Museum Baden, Solingen; in the collections of Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum
Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum
The Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum is an art museum in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The center of the museum is a building whose interior was designed by Henry van de Velde to house Karl Ernst Osthaus' art collection, open to the public as the Folkwang Museum...

in Hagen; and in the art museums of Soest, Iserlohn, and Lüdenscheid as well as in private collections.

Selection of Exhibitions

  • 1921–1927 rotating exhibition „Der Fels“, in many cities of Germany and Austria
  • 1929 Museum Osnabrück: group exhibition „Hagenring“
  • 1966 Gallery Lempertz Contempora, Cologne „Baukhage Bronstert Cordone Venema“
  • 1991 Museum of Modern Art, Passau „Der Fels“
  • 2006 Amtshaus Gallery, Freudenberg „Franz Bronstert - Ein Künstler der klassischen Moderne“
  • 2008 City Museum Lüdenscheid „Nature viewed by painters and photographers“
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