Edmund Kesting (1892-1970) - Kino

In the auction there is an abstract composition by the renowned German artist Edmund Kesting from 1927/1973 in the Constructivist style, size: 34.5 x 48 cm, motif size 15 x 12.5 cm.

Title: “Kino. Raumgestaltung.” The woodcut was the title motif of the art magazine DER STURM by Herwald Walden, weekly for culture and arts, vol. 18, no. 1/2 (April 1927). In this year Kesting had an exhibition in the Sturm Gallery. The original cover image of the STURM magazine is not part of the auction.

The woodcut is signed with an artist’s stamp. The edition of the woodcut from 1920 is not numbered. The condition is excellent, with a 2 cm crease at the top left edge of the sheet (see photo).

There is another KESTING print in a parallel auction as well as other German Constructivists (BUCHHOLZ and MAATSCH).

VITA EDMUND KESTING (Source: excerpts from Wikipedia)

Edmund Kesting (born July 27, 1892 in Dresden; died October 21, 1970 in Birkenwerder) was a German painter, graphic artist, photographer and art educator. He is counted among the representatives of informal painting.

In 1919 Kesting founded the private art school Der Weg – Schule für Gestaltung. In 1921 he met Herwarth Walden and began to work with Sturm.

Since 1920, constructivist works and cut collages emerged. He produced oil paintings, watercolors and gouaches. In 1922 Kesting married his pupil Gerda Müller. Close contacts existed to avant-garde artists such as Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Alexander Archipenko and others. Schwitters’ works particularly impressed Kesting. From 1923 he participated in exhibitions of the “Sturm” circle.

From around 1925 he intensively engaged with photography. He experimented with experimental photographic techniques such as multiple exposures, photograms and negative montages; for this, Kesting used cameras with large matte screen formats. In 1926 the Berlin school “Der Weg” was founded and the Gesellschaft der Sturmfreunde in Dresden was established. Kesting was now internationally successful. He took part in exhibitions in Moscow and New York. The Museum of Modern Art acquired cut collages by him. At the beginning of the 1930s he joined the German Association of Crafts. In 1931 Edmund Kesting founded, together with Erich Fraaß and Bernhard Kretschmar, the Neue Dresdner Sezession.

After the Nazis seized power, he became an obligatory member of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts. In 1933 the first house searches took place; Kesting subsequently destroyed some of his works. In the following years he worked as a commercial photographer for photo and car companies. He was able to participate in exhibitions until 1936, but then received a labor and exhibition ban, from which photography was not affected.

In 1937, twelve of his pictures were confiscated and destroyed from public collections in the nationwide coordinated action “Entartete Kunst” (Degenerate Art).

Together with Karl von Appen, Helmut Schmidt-Kirstein, Hans Christoph and others, Kesting founded the artists’ group “der ruf – befreite Kunst” in Dresden after the end of the Nazi dictatorship in 1945. In 1945/46, after the destruction of Dresden, a series of experimental photographic works titled Dresden Totentanz emerged, explicitly drawing on the famous Renaissance relief. In 1946 Kesting was appointed to the Academy of Applied Arts in Dresden; he took over the leadership of the workshop for “Photography and Film.” A year later he was dismissed, after which he relocated to Berlin and in 1948 became head of the photography department at the University of Fine and Applied Arts in Berlin-Weißensee. In 1953 there was a summary dismissal as part of the Formalism Controversy. In 1955 he was appointed as a lecturer for the subject of camera at the University of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg; he was retired in 1960.

Edmund Kesting died in 1970 in Birkenwerder near Berlin, where he had moved in 1948. Between 1949 and 1959 there were no exhibitions of his works in the GDR; only since about 1980 did Kesting’s work receive official recognition.