Unbenanntes Dokument

Biography Hanno Edelmann

Familie Edelmann beim sonntägigen Spaziergang

1927 The Edelmann family on a Sunday stroll

Hanno Edelmann was born in Hamburg in November 1923

Hanno Edelmann mit seiner Schwester Lisa

1929 Hanno Edelmann with his sister Lisa

His father's career goes into decline as a result of his union activities. So begins a time of constant moves for the family - one apartment after the other is 'rented dry'. (The first tenants in newly built apartments pay reduced rent for the first year.) The streets are the scene of fighting between Communists and the [Nazi] SA.

Der Lehrer Adolf Saggau mit seiner Klasse

1930 The teacher Adolf Saggau with his class

Hanno Edelmann loves his teacher, Adolf Saggau. Saggau seeks to awaken an appreciation of the value of art - especially of music - in the children. He finds a ready audience in Hanno, since Hanno's grandfather was a famous violinist. Of his own accord Hanno takes violin lessons with his teacher until 1934, when Saggau disappears without a trace. Hanno sees the wrecked apartment through a keyhole. He is recommended for admission to gymnasium and funds for his fees are collected - his proud father refuses, wanting no charity. School rapidly becomes uninteresting and his preoccupation with art grows. Edelmann draws... red flags, a horse on the school's white wall, a vanished teacher.

1933 Evening classes at art school

To become an artist - No, his father won't agree to that. Hanno is supposed to learn a 'real' occupation. The ten year old is allowed to attend evening classes in drawing and calligraphy at the `Hochschule für Bildende Künste` [College of Fine Arts]. He meets young painters here and is invited to their studios - a wonderful and mysterious world opens itself before him.

1940 The Edelmann family

In 1936 Hanno Edelmann wins first prize in a painting competition sponsored by the Hagenbecker Zoo. The prize ceremony takes place in the same building and at the same time as the `Entartete Kunst` ['Degenerate Art'] exhibition opens - an exhibition of paintings and sculpture despised by the Nazi Party. Hanno Edelmann slips past a guard into the exhibit and is fascinated by the pictures. He is particularly impressed by Oskar Kokoschka's `Windsbraut`. His father arranges an apprenticeship for Hanno in an architectural firm. He draws - the view out the window, the architects at their drafting tables, portraits. He breaks off his apprenticeship; his parting gift from the architects is a paintbox. His father, who in the meantime is unemployed, finds him a place as a lithographer's apprentice in the art publishing house of Mühlmeister & Johler. He draws nudes and ever more portraits, this time together with the painters who earn their living there.

1941 At radio operator's training in Königsberg

The seventeen year old is drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1941. He is assigned to a telecommunications unit and is trained as a radio operator, first in Königsberg and later in occupied France. In France he draws and sketches in every free minute - people in a cafe, the bridge of Avignon, anglers on the Rhone. In 1943 he's transferred to an intelligence unit on the Eastern Front at Vitebsk and is soon captured by the Red Army and sent to a Siberian prison camp at Sverdlosk. He is there four years. Following an illness he is permitted to work in the camp's ceramics shop and he draws - fellow POWs peeling potatoes, Russian prisoners, the camp commandant. In 1947 he is allowed to return to Hamburg.

1947 Head nurse Dora in the studio

Dora Klostermann, head surgery nurse in the university clinic, art lover and collector, comes to know Hanno Edelmann as a twenty-four year old patient. For Dora, Hanno is a discovery: his drawings and the unconditional seriousness with which he devotes himself to his work reveal him as an artist. She opens her collection of German Expressionists to him, supports him with modest sums of money, makes study visits to the country possible, and forges connections with collectors and gallery owners.

1950 in Willem Grimm's painting class

In 1948 Hanno Edelmann begins his art studies at the `Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg` with Prof. Willem Grimm, Ivo Hauptmann and Werner Haftmann. In Prof. Grimm's painting class roughly twenty students stand at their easels and paint with egg tempera (an emulsion of turpentine, egg yolk, water and pigments), mostly still life. The classroom is cramped and smells of turpentine. The teacher goes, sometimes too often, through the class - evaluates, corrects, encourages. Class evaluations take place each week. All the pictures are hung next to each other, and sometimes the best picture of the week is selected. Nude figure drawing takes place twice a week; other professors come to these sessions, examine the drawings over the students' shoulders, and comment - often differing strikingly from one another. In order to finance his studies, Edelmann drew book illustrations in the evenings.

Erika Edelmann auf einer Studienreise / im Atelier

1953 Erika Edelmann on a study trip / in the studio

During his studies Hanno Edelmann meets Erika Estag. She studies in Prof. Alfred Mahlau's graphics class. They marry in 1952. The time following Hanno's studies is a time of hardship. Paints are purchased with the little money that book illustrations bring. A studio is sought - a salon in an old villa, an old attic, through whose walls the winter snow blows - living space is extremely scarce in postwar Hamburg. "The main thing is that Hanno can paint."

1956 Before the painting "Spanischer Klostergarten"

Hanno and Erika Edelmann take a study journey together to Barcelona. Here are created - on the spot - large-format oil pantings that are only transported home with considerable difficulty. The trip to Spain has a great influence on the work in the atelier. Pictures with dark, intensive colours result.

1959 Exhibition at the Völkerkundemuseum Hamburg

The first big solo exhibition in the Oberlichtsaal of Hamburg's Völkerkundemuseum is well received, although representational painting meets with scant recognition in 'official' art circles. Most artists in postwar Germany orient themselves towards non-representational art and other influences emanating from the USA.

1962 Designing stained glass church windows

Hanno Edelmann is commissioned to design the stained glass windows for the Martin Luther Church in Hamburg. The windows are realized using concrete and glass techniques in 1962. The following years brought 20 more commissions for stained glass windows.

1966 Exhibition in the Moritzburg in Halle

In the '60s many paintings with critical social commentary come into being. Because of his humanistic engagement Hanno Edelmann is invited by the Neuen Münchner Galerie to present an exhibition in the Moritzburg in Halle.

bei der Herstellung einer Lithographie im Rahlstedter Haus

1968 Producing a lithograph in the Rahlstedt House

Lithography is an 18th Century planographic process. Hanno Edelmann follows the old technique of drawing directly on a sheet of chalk slate. All lithographs, woodcuts and etchings continue to be printed personally by Hanno and Erika Edelmann.

1974 Erika Edelmann in Malia/Crete

His travels through Greece provide Hanno Edelmann with new impulses. He sketches ink drawings of gnarled olive trees on the spot, and with oil pastels and watercolours paints light-flooded landscapes, people in the village square, in the cafe. The light and the strong colour also influence the pictures that take shape in the Hamburg atelier.

1985 Hanno and Erika Edelman in the studio in the 1980s

Stimulated by the opening of a bronze foundry near Hamburg, Hanno's sculptural creativity intensifies. His studio is the nerve centre of the household, where he works daily on sculptures, large-format oil paintings, watercolours and prints.

Hanno und Erika Edelmann in der Bronzegiesserei

1996 Hanno and Erika Edelmann in the bronze foundry

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