GEORG FRIETZSCHE

GEORG FRIETZSCHE

Biography

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Publication

Georg Frietzsche (1903 – 1986) studied between 1924 and 1928 at the University of Fine Art Berlin. His previous work was lost due to the war. In 1948, he held the position of lecturer for two years at the Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle. He then lived and worked in Berlin. Since the beginning of the 1980s, museum exhibitions, acquisitions and specialist publications have made people more aware of the reputation of the artist (Berlin State Museums, Kunsthalle Bremen, Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden, Museum Folkwang Essen, Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, Saarland Museum Saarbrücken). 1999 Retrospective exhibition with a catalogue in the Kassel State Museums and in the Ostwall Museum in Dortmund.

Naturalistic analogies of great richness were created in Indian ink and watercolour from 1960 onwards, building on his own naturalistic-orientated early work and in coming to terms with the movements of the 1950s. The rhythms, correspondence, depth, structural processes obey an immanent order and are carried by a high sense of form. The individual phases are defined in continuous sequences. The 1970s mark a turning point as the process of concentration leads to a new foundation. It is the way of liberation, from the outer appearance to an inner, to “create a new significant nature that is entirely of the spirit” (Georg Frietzsche). This makes his work less at home in German post-war art. It is far from the frequently encountered arbitrariness of the formal and informal, but rather represents an original special form of great differentiation in the main movements of international abstraction.