Werner Heldt (1904โ€“1954) was a German painter.

Life

Heldt was born in Berlin on 17 November 1904. The son of a pastor, he attended a grammar school, the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster. He studied art at the School of Arts and Crafts in 1923โ€“4, and then at the Berlin Academy until 1930. His early work consisting, mostly of townscapes and scenes of night-life,[1] shows the influence of his friend, the much older Heinrich Zille, with whom he used to visit the bars of suburban Berlin.[2] By 1929, though, he had broken away from Zille's mildly satirical and rather antiquated vision of the city.[2] In 1930 he visited Paris, where he met Maurice Utrillo, whose work he admired.[1] Between 1929 and 1933 he underwent a course of psychoanalysis which prompted him to give up painting, instead making a series of drawings inspired by his dreams.[1]

He moved to Majorca in 1933, but following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he returned to Berlin where he shared a studio with the painter Werner Gilles and the sculptor Hermann Blumenthal.[1] Unnerved by the political situation,[2] Heldt produced little work during this period. He was conscripted into the military in 1940, and eventually took up painting again while a prisoner of war in Ostfriesland in 1945.[1]

Following his release from captivity, Heldt returned to Berlin, where he painted the scenes of the devastated city which have won him his reputation.[1][2]

In the autumn of 1954 he went to stay with Werner Gilles on Ischia. He died there on 3 October, at the age of 49.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Werner Heldt". German Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1905 1985 (Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London). London: Royal Academy of Arts/ Prestel Verlag. 1985. pp. 484โ€“5.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Sello, Gottfried (16 May 1957). "Er malte seine Stadt Berlin: Zu einer Ausstellung der Bilder Werner Heldts bei der Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hannover" (PDF). Die Zeit (in German).


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