October Issue 2000
Guilford College in Greensboro Opens Fall Exhibit Season
The Guilford College Art Gallery's opening exhibition for the fall season is Witness to the 20th Century: The Artistic Biography of Fritz Eichenberg. This engaging exhibition chronicles the life and career of Fritz Eichenberg, artist, printmaker, teacher, author, social activist, and Quaker, whose life bore witness to the political, military, and social follies of the past century. Witness to the 20th Century, the first comprehensive presentation produced with the cooperation of the Fritz Eichenberg Trust, contains previously unexhibited works from the artist's personal collection, as well as other pieces on loan from museums and private collectors. The exhibit will be on view through Oct. 29, 2000. Philip Harnden, author, former publisher of The Other Side, and an acquaintance of Eichenberg, will give a lecture titled The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Fritz Eichenberg at 7:30pm on Oct. 4, in the Art Gallery. The gallery is located on the Guilford College campus in Greensboro, NC, in Hege Library.
As the title Witness to the 20th Century indicates, Fritz Eichenberg observed and commented on many of the pivotal events of the past century, including both World Wars, Weimar Germany, and post-war social activism. Born in 1901, as a young child living in Germany during World War I, Eichenberg endured the nightly bombing raids sustained by his industrial city of Cologne. It was during this time that he realized his desire to become "an artist with a message," and examine the human condition through caricature. Eichenberg noted in his autobiography, "During the last days of the war I used to go up to the roof of our house to pick up shrapnel souvenirs from the night's bombing raids. Undernourished, as we all were, I collapsed one morning in front of Dr. Fritz Witte's door. He was a famous art historian, priest and curator of the Schnütgen Museum of Religious Art." Dr. Witte, after discovering Eichenberg's artistic desires, gave him a book that contained works by Francisco Goya, Honoré Daumier, William Hogarth, and other artists who commented upon their milieu. For the young Eichenberg, this provided the impetus and encouragement that he needed to begin pursuing his career.
After an apprenticeship at a printing shop, where Eichenberg learned the basics of lithography, he began designing advertisements for a department store. During this time, he continued to sketch his surroundings and capture the essential elements of a situation through sharp observation, infused with great empathy for his subjects. Desiring to further his artistic training, Eichenberg enrolled in the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig and found a mentor in Professor Hugo Steiner-Prag. His professor, a central figure in 20th-century European book illustration, introduced the art of book illustration to Eichenberg. Encouraged by his teacher, Eichenberg resolved to become a successful book illustrator in order to support himself and express his social conscience.
His first projects included the folk tale Til Eulenspiegel, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. From the beginning, Eichenberg conscientiously chose a form of printmaking that enriched his subject, using wood engraving to lend a medieval tone to Til Eulenspiegel, while selecting lithography for the other two projects. All three of his first efforts were published in 1922, and Eichenberg soon found success as an illustrator for the highly respected Ullstein publishing house in Berlin.
For ten years, Eichenberg lived and worked
in Weimar Berlin, creating illustrations for Ullstein's magazines,
newspaper, and books. His biting images for the satirical magazine
UHU mocked the political and military elite, including the ever-growing
Nazi Party. As the political and economic situation of Weimar
Germany spiraled downward after the worldwide economic depression
of 1929, and the National Socialist party gained strength, Eichenberg
looked toward the future with great foreboding. By Mar. of 1933,
with Hitler and the National Socialists in control of Germany,
Eichenberg planned a business trip to the Americas under the pretext
of drawing illustrations of the United States, Mexico, and South
American countries for German publications; however, feeling uneasy
about the situation in Germany, Eichenberg was searching for a
new and safe home for his wife and child. Upon his return with
numerous sketches, he arranged for a second trip to the United
States late in 1933; however, this time he planned to bring his
family and not return to Germany. Soon after the Eichenbergs arrived
in New York, the editors at Ullstein, now under the control of
the Nazi party, fired him from his position. In order to support
himself in his new country, Eichenberg turned to teaching.
Eichenberg began teaching wood engraving at the New School for
Social Research, and creating images for the Federal Arts Project
and The Nation. During this period he developed contacts
within the publishing industry and once again began illustrating
books. In 1936, Eichenberg produced the images for the child's
tale Puss in Boots, which was selected as one of the 50
Best Books of the Year by the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
This award increased his visibility in the New York publishing
world and led to many commissions. During the next years of his
career, he received a consistent stream of projects for illustrating
major works of literature, including books by Shakespeare, the
Brontë sisters, Swift, Poe, and the classics of Russian literature,
including War and Peace, Fathers and Sons, Anna Karenina,
and The Brothers Karamazov.
He found that book illustration was a suitable medium for his
personality, as he found literature to be a means for personal
escape. Eichenberg brought his own intense identification with
the author and the characters to his illustrations, thus his images
opened a new world for the reader's understanding of a text. Already
established as a successful and prosperous commercial illustrator
of literature, in 1949 when he met the Christian radical Dorothy
Day (at a Pendle Hill conference), he began a parallel career
as an illustrator of religious images for Day's newspaper The
Catholic Worker.
Eichenberg became a member of the Religious Society of Friends
in 1940, shortly after the sudden death of his first wife. He
wrote and illustrated two pamphlets, Art and Faith (1952)
and Artist on the Witness Stand (1984), for the Quaker-affiliated
press, Pendle Hill Publications. It is perhaps his religious images
that provide a glimpse of the persona to which Eichenberg aspired,
and were most personally rewarding.
Witness to the 20th Century: An Artistic Biography of Fritz
Eichenberg will be on view through Oct. 29, the gallery will
be closed for the college's Fall Break from Oct. 14-22, 2000.
For additional information check our NC Institutional Gallery
listings or call the Gallery at 336/316-2438 or on the web at
(http://www.guilford.edu/original/libraryart/artgallery/).
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