Vintage original German Constructivist collage painting on cardboard by Kurt Teubner (1903 - 1990)

Literature : Eisold 2010.

Provenance : From the estate of the artist.

Unsigned, verso dedication to Kurt Teubner. 

Dated on verso: Aug. 19, 1987.

Display 30 x 49 cm. 

Picture size 40 x 59 cm.

Good condition, some signs of wear

Teubner came from a humble background, his father was the well-known carver Emil Teubner. Due to financial hardship, he could not properly complete his training at the drawing school. From an early age, he had to struggle through life with various activities. He was a glass painter in Leipzig and Chemnitz, later a decorator, cliché artist and commercial artist in Düsseldorf, among other places, where he first encountered contemporary art, such as Otto Dix.

The economic and personal situation of the artist worsened with the global economic crisis and the accession to power of the National Socialists. House searches because of his KPD membership and other reprisals due to his wife's Jewish descent were the order of the day.

He later reflected on this period in a work entitled “1933”, among other things. Nazi rule forced him to emigrate internally. In 1942, the "Reich Chamber of Fine Arts" imposed a ban on painting, which was of course ignored as far as possible. We are showing the landscape painting from this period in light gray tones, which is very reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich. Teubner stuck a meaningful piece of paper on the back with the inscription “A picture to become good – Christmas 1942”.

Finally, in 1944, they were deported to France to build a fortress. He managed to escape during the Allied invasion. Kurt Teubner survived the last months of the Nazi period in hiding with his wife in the attic in Aue.

These first half of life were eventful years that touched the substance. They left Teubner in no doubt that a different, better social order had to be set in motion. He therefore took an active part in the new cultural beginnings in Aue. He was one of the co-founders of the “Culture Association for the Democratic Renewal of Germany” and organized a first exhibition entitled “Liberated Art” as early as autumn 1945. He earned his living as a poster painter and trainer for new teachers. From 1958 he was then able to devote more time to his artistic work. Landscapes, portraits and still lifes were created in large numbers from then on. In many of his works he also reflected on his previous life. 

All his life, Kurt Teubner was in search of the artistic expression that suited him. In painting, he alternated stylistically between realistic, at times naive tendencies and expressive attitudes (“Moonlight”) to abstract-constructive experiments.

From the early 1970s, Teubner first found his way to collage, and then increasingly to assemblage, ie the three-dimensional material image. From then on, numerous such works were created in an untiring creative frenzy, which soon brought him national attention and which are still associated with the name Teubner today.

Teubner did not want art just for art's sake. Attracting attention at any price was just as foreign to him as all market calculations. Teubner was concerned with the aesthetics of the inconspicuous, with things in themselves and with the stories associated with them. He didn't need any spectacular pictorial objects for this. He found what he wanted to tell in old cupboards, worn felt shoes or dented tin bowls. Driven by his subtle sense of humor and a pinch of melancholy, Kurt Teubner created original Erzgebirge still lifes that are full of authenticity - and he does so directly, without the detour of a painted image, but in continuation of a path of object art, as prepared by Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters or Robert Rauschenberg.

Although the assemblages are a long way from Teubner's training as a pattern draftsman, both artistically and technically, one always finds a certain ordering principle in the composition, as well as the targeted selection of a specific and effective section and sometimes also a tendency towards decoration.

However, the assemblages also reveal a clear connection to his Erzgebirge origins – where handicrafts and tinkering have been particularly widespread for generations. You can feel this playful impulse in the works, and that gives them their naturalness, their sovereignty.