Geometric Abstractions
Debra Force Fine Art highlights the works of German-born abstract artist Werner Drewes
Werner Drewes (18991985) was born in Germany. Growing up, he recalled that his favorite subjects were gymnastics and drawing. His gymnastics instructor was also an artist and encouraged him to draw and paint. He said,“up until my 16th or 17th year
I never thought that I would become an artist.” Nevertheless, from 1921 to 1922, he studied with Paul Klee, Johannes Itten and Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus in Weimar.the Bauhaus was formed by Walter Gropius in 1919. In his “Bauhaus Manifesto” Gropius declared,“let us then create a new
guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist! Together let us desire, conceive and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.” In 1923, Drewes left and traveled around the world, including the
U.S. He returned to the Bauhaus, which was then in Dessau, and studied with László Moholy-nagy, Wassily Kandinsky and Lyonel Feininger. Despite the experience he commented,“when one goes studying it’s not so much the subject you study or with whom you come together as teacher and student, but the influence of other students and other human beings you meet which helps you to develop.”
As the influence of Nazism grew, abstract painters became out of favor, and the Bauhaus was denounced for producing “degenerate art” and being “Un-german.” Drewes immigrated to the U.S. He was one of the first Bauhaus artists to settle in America. He exhibited his work and taught at the Brooklyn Museum of Art for the WPA and later at Columbia University and Brooklyn College. In 1946 he began teaching at the School of Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he taught for nearly 20 years.
In 1936 he had been a founding member of American Abstract Artists, which was formed to promote public understanding of abstract art. An exhibition of the range of his work will be shown at Debra Force Fine Art in New York, March 3 through April 17. It will include the geometric abstractions from 1970 to 1985 and will feature large and small oils, works on paper, collages and several prints.
He said,“i am a painter and in love with color and its many tonalities.” Color and line had fascinated him since his youth.there was more to art for him as well. In a statement for an exhibition in 1936 he wrote, “What is the mystery underlying the Architecture of our Universe? What are the laws which create the pattern of the frost which forms on our windows? What causes the stars to stay in their orbit? What is it which creates joy and sorrow within us?… All these are problems belonging to the world we live in and which should concern the artist, as well as those problems of sunlight or the growth of a tree. But art is also a world with its own laws, whether they underlie a painting of realistic or abstract forms…
“To create new universes within these laws and to fill them with the experiences of our life is our task… When they convincingly reflect the wisdom or struggle of the soul, a work of art is born.”