Ferdinand Springer

Ferdinand Springer , born in 1907 in Germany, installed in France in 1928, died in 1998, is a painter engraver pertaining to the news École of Paris, whose work Abstrait E is directed in its last stage towards the free figuration of reinvented landscapes.

Biography

Ferdinand Springer is born on October 1st, 1907 with Berlin from a German father, scientific editor, and of a Swiss mother. After secondary studies with Potsdam, it engages as from 1926 in studies of History of art at the University of Zurich, according to the courses of Heinrich Wölfflin. It is devoted in 1927 to painting, works initially with Milan, where it meets Morandi, in the workshop of futuristic the Carlo Carrà, then, in 1928, in Paris near Roger Bissière with the Académie Ranson where also teach Severini and Kisling. It carries out simultaneously copies with the Louvre and in 1932 the Gravure with “Workshop 17 learns” from Stanley Hayter. It makes in 1935 the meeting of Wilhem Uhde which buys several works to him, confiscated later by the Gestapo, and of Otto Freundlich. It presents in 1936 its first personal exposure, exposes to the “Surindépendants” with his friends Hans Hartung, Victor Brauner, Maria Elena Vieira da Silva. It illustrates engravings in 1937 “the Banquet” of Plato, voyage and exposes to New York with the gallery Julien Levy, meets Calder, Dali, the galerist Pierre Matisse. In 1938 it settles with Grasse, the landscape of Provence giving fresh impulse to its work.

Ferdinand Springer is interned in 1939, with in particular max Ernst, Hans Bellmer and Wols, with the camp of the Tilery of the Milles, close to Aix-en-Provence, where thousands of German nationals will be gathered, essentially of the refugees having fled the mode Nazi (in particular two Nobel Prize, the son of Thomas Mann and that of Karl Liebknecht). It is then mobilized like person receiving benefits (hard-working volunteer) with Forcalquier, where it becomes acquainted with Pierre Seghers. Demobilized in 1940, it turns over to Grasse, where it binds with Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Alberto Magnelli, Sonia Delaunay, the sculptor François Stahly, and one will speak about the “Group about Fatty”. It is at that time that Ferdinand Springer carries out its first abstract works. In 1942 he flees in Suisse a few weeks before the German occupation of the free zone and visit with Bern the workshop of Paul Klee. The Swiss authorities prohibiting to him to expose and sell its works, it carries out a series of gouaches on paper.

In 1945 Ferdinand Springer turns over to Grasse where the majority of its works former to 1939 disappeared. From 1950 it develops a language abstracts personal, in margin of the lyric abstraction, famous of engravings “Eupalinos” of Paul Valéry, published by Gaston Gallimard to which Raymond Queneau presented it. Whereas it is established in 1952 in Paris, of new engravings for the “CAT-T-piece-King” of Lao-Tseu and for the " Deliver Tibetan of Morts" mark out one long period of graphic work (Burin, Aquatinte and Eau-forte). Ferdinand Springer turns again to painting in 1955 and the exposure which it presents in 1958 is prefaced by Francis Ponge. It realizes in 1960 its first “cuttings”, engraving-reliefs whose titles refer as well to the Australian Aborigènes as in old Egypt, with civilizations Greek, Etruscan or Amerindian, in a graphic transposition of the spirit of the magic objects of the traditional cultures. Ferdinand Springer appears then, near Henri-Georges Adam, Courtin or Johnny Friedlaender, like one of the craftsmen of the revival of modern engraving. While it regularly exposes in Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland) or to the United States and that first retrospective exposures are devoted to him to Heidelberg, then Dortmund, Bremen, Grasse, Caen (foreword of Bernard Dorival), two tapestries are woven according to its models by the Plasse Workshops it Caisne.

Ferdinand Springer settles definitively in Grasse in 1975, continuing to engrave and realizing from 1980 of large watercolours of “imaginary landscapes” inspired by the high-country grassois. After a new series of abstract geometrical compositions, in 1990, in which dominate the spherical forms and tons them in half-tones, its painting is directed towards an abstract figuration or a “free abstraction” where the lights and the horizons of reinvented landscapes constantly appear present. " My work is not completed but it is nevertheless behind me. I believe that I do not have anything any more to prove. I am to some extent delivered, free, which enables me to follow my desire where that it is located. My desire in this moment, it is to continue to develop the topic of the imaginary landscape in multiple variations. I have the impression to operate a synthesis of all the experiments antérieures" , known as Springer (Emmanuel Foster, 1995). After a new retrospective exposure to Ciotat in August, Ferdinand Springer dies in Grasse on December 31st, 1998.

Judgments

" The landscape becomes a support then: Springer collects there reasons, forms of nature that it déconstruit then “recreates” in the loneliness of the workshop. Any descriptive aspect is abolished here. The still visible traces of figuration in the oldest watercolours disappeared. Beyond the landscape, Springer reaches the gasoline of the things. The very pure pictorial language, the reduction of the colors, are those of these Masters Japan board who, with a line, a point, with the least accent, can suggest a horizon, a mountain or the granite of a roche."

Emmanuelle Foster, Ferdinand Springer , Fatty, Palate of the Congresses, 1992

" From 1992 the metamorphosis gains its painting when Springer transposes this new climate there. On its fabrics broad surfaces of the color gather in ciels and clouds, ponds and hills, trees or rocks, the light turns of a degree moreover, crosses the border of the present, touches with blue banks of the timeless one. Null will illusionist: (…) nature appears rather there a dream, an expansion of painting. By very other means Springer deploys in the invention of its landscapes metaphysics a dimension of strangeness which did not cease accompanying the history by the landscape, of the Romantisme to the symbolism or with the Surréalisme. "

Ferdinand Springer (file), Ciotat, 1998

Selective bibliography

Michel Seuphor, Dictionary of the abstract art , Paris, 1957.
Ferdinand Springer, Watercolours , Texts of Francis Ponge and Wolf Jobst Siedler, Berlin, Gebr Editions. Mann, 1984.
Ferdinand Springer, Watercolour , Krefeld, Verlag Peerlings Gallery, 1987.
Emmanuelle Foster, the work engraved of Ferdinand Springer and Ferdinand Springer, Evolution of work recent , in Ferdinand Springer , Fatty, Palate of the Congresses, 1992.
Lydia Harambourg, Dictionary of the painters of the School of Paris, 1945-1965 , Neuchâtel, Ides and Calendes, 1993.
Emmanuelle Foster, Ferdinand Springer (talks), foreword of Lydia Harambourg, Neuchâtel, Ides and Calendes, 1995.

Internal bond

nonfigurative Painting

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