| | | | | | | | Umbo: Ohne Titel (Ruth. Die Hand), um 1926
2016 erworben mit Mitteln der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien
© Phyllis Umbehr/Galerie Kicken Berlin/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020
Repro: Anja E. Witte | | | | | | Umbo. Photographer. Works 1926 – 1956 | | | | 21 February – 25 May, 2020 | | | | Opening: Thursday, 20 February, 7pm | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Umbo: Pantoffeln, 1928/29
© Phyllis Umbehr/Galerie Kicken Berlin/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020
Repro: Anja E. Witte | | | | | | With a selection of about 200 works and many documents, this first major retrospective in 24 years is now com- ing to Berlin. “Umbo. Photographer. Works 1926–1956” is an exhibition by the Sprengel Museum Hannover created in partnership with the Berlinische Galerie and Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau.
Umbo’s photographs are experimental, imaginative and above all just like the photographer him- self: unconventional. In 1921 the young artist applied to the Bauhaus in Weimar, where he met his most important mentor: Johannes Itten above all taught Umbo to see things, trained his sense of composition and form and an ability to play with contrasts of light and dark that was to be a hallmark of his work.
From the early Bauhaus in Weimar, which laid the foundations for Umbo’s work, he was drawn in the mid-1920s to Berlin, mecca for the avant-garde. Although the urban atmosphere was stimulating, Umbo was living in dire poverty, and still on a quest for ways to express himself artistically. He eventually found the answer in photography, thanks to his Bauhaus friend Paul Citroen. Almost overnight, Umbo shot to fame as one of the most sought-after photographers in the Weimar Republic, and very soon he had founded a new approach to portraits.
In particular, it was these portraits depicting the ladies of bohemian Berlin that gave such powerful expression to a type known as the New Woman, not least due to Umbo’s striking visual style. The writer and actor Ruth Landshoff, for example, posed in ever new roles for him. Just one reason why Herbert Molderings called Umbo’s work a "big bang" in modern photography.
Less spectacular, but no less significant, were Umbo’s innovations in press photography. The 1920s triggered a regular boom in pictorial magazines. Simon Guttmann founded the picture agency Dephot, and Umbo was its first and leading photographer. | | | | | | | | | Umbo: Stahl-Appartment-Haus von Architekt Mies van der Rohe in Chicago, 1952
© Phyllis Umbehr/Galerie Kicken Berlin/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020 | | | | | | When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Umbo lost the creative habitat that had inspired his outstanding output in the 1920s. His pictures from this period suggest that he had withdrawn into a shell, a kind of 'inner exile'. The illustrated reportage he produced now focused largely on fairly harmless themes, allowing him to preserve his passion for the circus and vaudeville theatre. But by the end of the 1930s he was on trickier ground, with pictorial reports from on board the "Wilhelm Gustloff", where the "Kraft durch Freude" movement was taking a cruise, and from a college run by the "Bund Deutscher Mädchen" to educate loyal female citizens. These demonstrate how even an apolitical, tolerant person like Umbo could bow to pressures under a totalitarian regime.
In 1945, with his archives ravaged by war, Umbo was literally left standing amid the ruins of his photographic œuvre. He moved to Hannover, where he had to start again from scratch professionally. Although he was still working as a press photographer, he could not replicate his success of the 1920s. Even in advanced years, casual jobs helped him to make ends meet. In the 1970s, when photography was admitted to museums as an art form, his works gradually came to light again. Gallery manager Rudolf Kicken, in particular, tried to reconstruct the oeuvre. Not until the mid-1990s did ground-breaking research by Herbert Molderings introduce Umbo to a broader public and grant him a place in the annals of photographic history.
Exhibition catalogue: Snoek Verlag, 336 pages, 320 illustrations German/English
Museum edition: 48€
Book trade edition: 78€
ISBN: 978-3-86442288-1 | | | | | | | | | Umbo: Kleines Mädchen, 1928/1929
© Phyllis Umbehr/Galerie Kicken Berlin/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020 | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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