Karl Waldmann Museum

Info

Karl Waldmann is a German artist active untill 1958. His biography is unknown

Geschiedenis

KARL WALDMANN

Some will speak about an ENIGMA in connection with Karl Waldmann. We will speak rather about a NOVEL structured like an essay on the madness of the 20th century.

Karl Waldmann is one of the recent discoveries of Constructivism and definitely a very important discovery. Artist linked to German-Russian avant-garde whose works are produced in a period from 1930 to 1958.

It was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall that he was rediscovered through 1,200 works, mostly consisting of collages and photomontages.
Formally, Waldmann’s art is very heterogeneous: it never associated itself with one single movement.
Works from his early period are abstract, but soon his creations begin to refer to the constructivist, surrealist and Dadaist movements.
One can thus compare Karl Waldmann with artists such as Schwitters, Heartfield, Haussmann, Hannah Hoch as well as Rodchenko, Maïakovski, Moholy-Nagy, Marianne Brandt, Klusis and Lissitzky, but he is not being completely akin to them. His originality lies in the meaning of his works that refer back to Nazism and Stalinism. He brings a political criticism and a denunciation of the two regimes. He reverses signs and codes of these two dictatorships to criticize their ideology with an intelligence, that gives to his work a visual originality.

Very little is known at the moment about his life and personality.
His family – met in Dresden in 1989 and since deceased – described him as “crazy”.
It is possible that he may have refused to exhibit his work for existential or political reasons, but also for his own safety during the years of Nazi governance and later under Stalinist censorship.
Also, he might not have been a “pure” artist wanting to exhibit or belong to any particular school, and he may have produced his work in the secrecy of his studio, like many other artists from the East. In this sense, he is an „outsider artist“, in a radical way outside of the system, and thus discovered posthumously.

His work addresses topics such as politics, society, racism, war, ideology, as well as film, literature, theatre, poetry and fine arts.
Many personalities from the art world (collectors, curators, scientists, historians etc.) have discovered a passion for this enigma and the work’s self-evident originality.
Since his discovery, several exhibitions have been devoted to him.