FRIEDRICH SCHRoeDER SONNENSTERN* (Kaukehmen 1892 - 1982 Berlin) Lady with hat and coat, 1979 lithography/paper ...

FRIEDRICH SCHRoeDER SONNENSTERN* (Kaukehmen 1892 - 1982 Berlin)
Lady with hat and coat, 1979
lithography/paper, 60 x 49,7 cm
dated 1979, numbered 52/70

ESTIMATE € 100 - 200
STARTING PRICE € 100

Friedrich Schroeder Sonnenstern was a 20th-century German draftsman and painter and one of the most important representatives of Outsider Art and Art Brut. Even his early youth was characterized by stays in educational institutions, in 1919 he fled to Berlin and dealt with occultism, fortune telling and healing magnetism. He founded a sect and distributed his income in the form of rolls (Schrippen) preferably to children, which earned him the title "Schrippenfuerst von Schoeneberg". In the provincial insane asylum in Neustadt in Schleswig-Holstein, he met the artist Hans Ralfs, who encouraged him to draw. This was followed by a three-year prison term, service in the air force depot and deportation to the Himmelmoor labor camp. In 1942 he managed to escape to Berlin, from 1949 he began to draw intensively. The Surrealism exhibition in Paris in 1959, directed by Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp, hailed him as the most formidable artist of the 20th century. His admirers included Henry Miller, Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst. From the 1970s he erroneously belonged to the artist group of the Berliner Malerpoeten, although he had nothing to do with it. Friedrich Schroeder-Sonnenstern was a member of the Deutscher Kuenstlerbund. With the death of his partner Martha Moeller in 1964, Sonnenstern increasingly lost his footing in life and had to move out of his apartment. He lived a secluded life in a mental hospital and died in poverty in Berlin. In 2013 his art was rediscovered and exhibited at the 2013 Venice Art Biennale. His pictures show bizarre, partly erotic, partly nightmarish creatures, with daring combinations of human and animal. As a special feature he sees the representations of facial parts such as nose, chin and ear, which he interpreted as "male genitals".

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