Albert Hennig
Leipzig
1907 -
Zwickau
1998
Albert Hennig was born in Leipzig in 1907. Coming from the Bauhaus tradition, he was part of the group "The Lost Generation" ("Die verschollene Generation") and is considered one of the last artists whose entire catalog is rooted in the Bauhaus concept. Already in the 1920's and up until 1933 (the end of Bauhaus), Hennig worked on photography.
While in Dessau and Berlin, he received instruction from von Peterhans, Schleper, Schmidt, Mies von der Rohe, and Kandinsky, whose collective influence became the cornerstone for his artistic work. The Nazis confiscated and destroyed his first photographic series "Kinder der Straße" ("Children of the Street"); this created a furor in the Bauhaus. Encouraged by his teacher Josef Albers, Hennig dedicated himself to painting beginning in 1932. His works reflected a deep intellectual affinity with the great forerunner of Bauhaus, Paul Klee.
His duties as a construction worker required him to work as such from 1934 until 1945. After the war, he worked for the Cultural Association of Zwickau as a founding member of the group "Bildende Künstler" ("Visual Artists"). In 1952, he distanced himself from the one-sided cultural politics of the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany); he saw himself forced to resign his post and worked until 1972 as a concrete worker. After that, Hennig turned back to painting.
At the opening of the Bauhaus in 1976, he was publicly honored; in 1991, he received the Max Pechstein Prize; and finally, he was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit in 1996. Hennig participated in many exhibits in Germany as well as abroad. His works were well received and garnered much attention. They were created according to the Bauhaus' strict rules of form. Hennig's creations establish a poetic union of surfaces, forms, and lines, all intertwining and mutually penetrating; partly constructive and abstract and partly reminiscent of objects coming from the colorful background of the painting.
Albert Hennig died in 1998 in Zwickau.
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