Rudolf Bredow

Rudolf Bredow (born 2 November 1909 in Berlin, died 17 November 1973 in Bremen), German post-expressionist painter, draughtsman and art teacher.

Bredow’s lifework became famous only after his death. It comprises ca. 1000 documented works (watercolour paintings, coloured chalk drawings, oil paintings and figurines) and numerous previously unreleased drawings. “Bredow’s best works are classical in their simplicity and balance and are equal or quite often even superior to Schmidt-Rottluff’s late black-rimmed watercolour paintings, for instance.” The artist is considered to be “one of the greatest discoveries of the German art market during the 90’s”.

1930–1934: he studied at the arts and crafts school in Berlin and took lessons with the graphic artist Hans Orlowski (1894–1967), the costume and stage designer Harold Bengen and the painter Max Kaus (1891–1977). After finishing his vocational education he became a painter and graphic artist for film, advertisement, fashion and theatre in Berlin. He was befriended with Bogislav Barlog and was acquainted with Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. 1940–1942: he worked as art teacher in Berlin, afterwards did his military service in the German Armed Forces. 1949: he became teacher for costume design and taught drawing and painting at the municipal technical college for textile industry and fashion. 1952–1954: he was art master at the vocational school Berlin-Neukoelln and in 1954 director of the sketch courses at the dressmaker’s guild Berlin. Since 1955 he had been working as art teacher at private and public schools (Bad Sachsa 1955–1964; Langeoog 1957–1958; Hinterzarten 1959; Oberhausen 1961–1964, 1966–1971; Bad Honnef 1964–1966; Schloss Schwarzenberg 1971–1973; since 1973 at the public boarding school of Lower Saxony in Esens/ East Frisia). On the 17 November 1973 Bredow died during an eye operation in Bremen. He was interred in Nienburg. Bredlow’s estate became Sofie Walter’s († 2005) property by order of the local court in Aurich. In 1989 the art collection Tumulka (Munich) took over the largest part of Bredow’s works. The artist’s written estate has been kept safe in the archive for fine arts of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg since 1992.

Bredow is an “artist of the lost generation”, who were born during the turn of the century and due to the confusion during the world wars and the artistic dictatorship of the National Socialists cannot be classified to a movement that belongs to abstraction or the Art Informel, which were accepted after 1945. Like other artist of this generation (Eduard Bargheer, Werner Gilles, Werner Heldt, Xaver Fuhr, Hans Puhrmann, Philipp Bauknecht, Hermann Teuber, Alfons Klein, Heinrich Steiner, Wendelin Schied etc.), who were around 40 or 50 years old, Bredow also took up the techniques of cubism, abstraction and especially of expressionism, when he continued his work after 1945. From this he developed his post-expressionist style, whose foundations he laid in 1955 and which led to artistically mature and independent late works of art from 1960/1 until his early death in 1973. Bredow did not focus on representing a certain motif. Concerning themes he, as a draughtsman, preferred sketched nature observations and romanced figuartion in the foreground. As a watercolour artist he favoured the condensed visual experience of landscape or still life and in oil paintings the depiction of idealised or sometimes abstract females. The dominating theme in his coloured chalk drawings are figurative, such as depictions of Christ and the saints.

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