Henry Moore Institute rediscovers the German artist Egon Altdorf, who ‘detested the commercial art world’

Throughout his lifetime, the German artist Egon Altdorf maintained a low profile.

“My father was very reluctant to promote his work,” says his son, Dorian Crone. “He by no means had a vendor—he detested the industrial artwork world.” Consequently, Altdorf’s sculptures, work, woodcuts and etchings are virtually unknown, in Germany and internationally. However all that’s about to alter: the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds is opening an exhibition of his artwork tomorrow, which runs till 26 November. A lot of the artwork to be proven was salvaged by Crone in 2008 from Altdorf’s studio earlier than it was demolished after his demise.

Altdorf’s enigmatic summary symbolism, heavy traces and pronounced Expressionist affect are attribute of post-war German artwork. However he was additionally influenced by the British artists he met in 1953—a visit he described as crucial occasion in his inventive growth.

He had received a prize in a world competitors organised by the Institute for Up to date Arts in London to design the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner and the work, which has not survived, was exhibited on the Tate. Throughout his time in Britain, he visited Henry Moore at his studio in A lot Hadham and met Barbara Hepworth, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick and Geoffrey Clarke.

Altdorf’s most vital surviving work is the design of the inside of a brand new synagogue in-built Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1966. Although not himself Jewish, he was additionally in 1953 chosen to make a stone monument commemorating the previous synagogue that was destroyed on Kristallnacht in 1938.

“We’re so happy to have the ability to shine a lightweight on this little-known artist and provides his work the eye it deserves,” says Clare O’Dowd, the curator of analysis on the Henry Moore Institute. “His multi-disciplinary apply is an inspiring instance of interfaith cooperation and the internationalism of the Fifties, and really a lot resonates right now.”

Having grown up in Berlin, Altdorf was drafted into the military in 1941 and brought as prisoner of warfare in Tunisia. He was interned in Texas, then took half in an intensive programme to coach directors for the reconstruction of post-war Germany on Rhode Island. He selected to reside in Wiesbaden on his launch, understanding that he had misplaced each his dwelling and his mother and father in Berlin by that point, and studied sculpture in close by Mainz with Emy Roeder.

He met a younger Scottish artist and mannequin, Diana Wilson, in Munich and so they married in 1954. However he couldn’t his help his spouse, who was unable to work in Germany, so she took two-year-old Dorian along with her to England. Crone didn’t meet his father once more till he was 18.

“There have been two items of his artwork in the home that I used to have a look at as a baby and surprise about him,” Crone says. He describes his father as “a lateral thinker and an off-the-wall character.”

When Altdorf died in 2008, a good friend of his known as Crone to inform him the studio was being demolished. “I rushed over to the studio in Wiesbaden and I noticed rolls of paper there that seemed like art work, and I managed to save lots of them,” Crone says.

For his son, studying about Altdorf’s work “has been a beautiful and cathartic method to get to know him,” he says. “I needed to see whether or not I may share his artwork with a wider world.”