MUSEUM RITTER - Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart

Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart is one of the few artists to have subscribed to a geometrical abstract approach right from the outset. After studying interior design, architecture and sculpture at the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Technische Hochschule in Hanover, he entered the scene in 1923/24 as an artist. From Hanover, at that time an important centre for progressive art, he came swiftly in contact with Russian Constructivism, the Bauhaus, and the Netherlandish De Stijl group, which he joined in 1925. In 1927 he was among the founder members of the local group «die abstrakten hannover». A few years later he became a member of the Parisian association Cercle et Carré (1930) and co-founder of the artists' group Abstraction-Création (1932).
By his own count, during his 40-year-long career as an artist Vordemberge-Gildewart produced only 222 paintings, which initially he termed constructions and later compositions. In addition to this came numerous drawings, collages, prints and watercolours, as well as a number of designs in the fields of architecture and typography. Vordemberge-Gildewart was more of an intuitive artist who neither shored up his Concrete painting with ideologies nor sided with a mathematically and scientifically founded belief in laws. Be that as it may, his works captivate with their great clarity and the harmonious balance of their parts.


1899		born in Osnabruck
1919-22		Studies interior design, sculpture and architecture at the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Technische Hochschule in Hanover
1925		Member of the De Stijl group
1927		Founding of the art group “die abstrakten hannover”
1930		Member of the art association “Cercle et Carré”, Paris
1932		Founder member of the group “Abstraction-Création”, Paris
1938		Emigrates to Amsterdam
1952-54		Lecturer at the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, Rotterdam
1954		Appointed by Max Bill as Head of the Department of Visual Design and Communication, Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm
1962		died in Ulm