User:Angielittlefield/Willy fick

Willy Fick: Wilhelm Peter Hubert Fick (1893-1967) Fick was a Cologne dadaist from 1916-23 and a scholarship student of Jan Thorn-Prikker at the Cologne School of Applied Arts 1928-1931. Duesseldorf art agent Johanna Ey represented his Weimar period works. Many works were destroyed by bombing in World War II but preserved in archival photographs in the Rhenish Picture Archive. Fick painted and cartooned until his death in Canada Oct 3, 1967. He preserved the works of his artist sister Angelika Hoerle (1899-1923). []

Early Life

Wilhelm, Peter Hubert Fick was the third child of cabinet maker Richard Fick of Massow, Pomerania and Anna Kraft of Cologne, Germany. He was born in Cologne Feb 7, 1893. Willy’s mother was the daughter of a highly placed Cologne railroad official, a Loading Master. While apprenticed as a cabinet maker, Willy took evening and weekend courses at the Cologne School of Applied Arts/where he met artists Heinrich Hoerle and Anton Raederscheidt, who later along with him co-founded the art-political group, Stupid []. Fascinated by art, music and architecture Willy subscribed to the black and white periodical Licht und Schatten, collected sheet music and went to the impressive 1912 Sonderbund Exhibition. Willy Fick’s father was a staunch trade unionist, his young sister Angelika a budding socialist and Willy dabbled with the anarchistic works of Mikhail Bakunin. The Fick music evenings where Willy played piano or violin with his siblings, often turned into heated political discussions.

Dadaist

Anti-war proponents such as Willy, his sister Angelika and his future brother-in-law Heinrich Hoerle felt confident the S.P.D.(Social Democratic Party), would not vote for war credits in 1914, but, when it did Willy Fick registered as a conscientious objector. He served in a non-combat position as a wagon driver from 1917 to 1918. He had time until 1917 to develop his art which started with anti-war linocuts mocking the sheepishness of the masses. Willy’s acquaintanceship circle enlarged during the war to include Otto Freundlich and Carl Oskar Jathoboth of whom had returned early from the front. From 1916 onwards Carl and Kaethe Jatho ran an artist-centered anti-war group in their home where Willy met their friend Franz Wilhelm Seiwert an artist and arts theorist with a broad circle of friends. Everyone was connected either through art, politics, war or love. Willy got into closer contact with the married artists Marta Hegemannand Anton Raederscheidt who were friends of the Hoerles. However unlike those noted, Willy Fick had full-time employment. He worked for the City of Cologne Transportation Department between 1918 and 1923 during a time when cash-strapped Germany fomented with revolt. Since Willy squeezed his art time out from work and because he was a natural buffoon, Fick became the butt of sarcastic humour during the Dada time. He appeared in the Bulletin D exhibition as an “Unknown Master from the Beginning of the 20th Century” and in the Brauhaus Winter exhibition as “a vulgar dilettante”. In a taped interview with Prof. Michel Sanouillet in 1967 he explained his part in these exhibition/events that mocked the established art world. He also stated that his work traveled with the Bulletin D exhibition to the Graphic Cabinet Von Bergh and Co in Duesseldorf in 1920. Fick’s first works under his own name appeared in Stupid 1, the catalogue of the continuous exhibitions at the Raederscheidt apartment on Hildeboldplatz. His child-like works were in keeping with the Stupid group’s intention to create a newer better world after the Armageddon of WWI. Fairy-tale like watercolours from this period show the hope for a better world that was soon dashed by the dire post-WWI situation and by the death of his sister Angelika Hoerle who died of tuberculosis at 23-years-of-age.

Weimar Artist

Deaths haunted Willy Fick during the inter-war period. His sister Angelika died 1923, his mother in 1927, his brother Richard in 1932, his father in 1935 and his sister Maria in 1939. Deaths and the success of the Nazi party in 1933 dominated the negative iconography Fick developed. His dark works in which human simulacra float in a void and where life is played on or by a checkered board, were influenced by Surrealism, Neue Sachlichkeit and the Cologne Progressives. Although it was a personally sad and politically oppressive time, Fick’s career prospered. He was a member of the Werkbund bildender Kuenstler/Association of Progressive Artists, exhibited at the Koelnisher Kunstverein/Cologne Art Institute, Becker and Newmann Gallery and with Johanna Ey, known as Mother Ey in Duesseldorf. Gottfried Brockmannwho had been a friend of Fick’s sister Angelika wrote, “Sometimes I saw pictures by him at Mrs. Ey’s; they were small but very colourful. I still remember one of them clearly. It was a hot-house with steel blue and poisonous green flowers.”. In 1927, Richard Riemerschmidt, director of the Koelner Werkschulenchampioned Fick so that he received a tuition-free scholarship thanks to Mayor of Cologne Konrad Adenauer. From 1928-31 he studied full time under the tutelage of Jan Thorn-Prikker a famous glass painter and muralist. Thorn-Prikker’s most significant impact on Fick’s art was his lifelong interest in transparency and his love of colour experiments that looked like stained glass.

In 1932 the constellation of the short-lived “Gruppe 32” comprised of glass painter Ludwig Ronig, Neue Sachlichkeit artist Heinrich Maria Davringhausen and Fick’s dada-time friends Seiwert, Raederscheidt and Hoerle showed the mixture of Neue Sachlichkeit, glass painting and Progressive interests that blended at that time and in Fick’s works as well. “Gruppe 32” had two exhibitions in Cologne and Duesseldorf before disbanding in 1933. In preparation for Fick’s first one man show “Works by Willy Fick” at the City Art Museum, Duesseldorf March to April 1931, he had his works photographed by the Rheinisches Bildarchiv/Rhenish Picture Archive. The photo of “Morceau” shows Fick was also experimenting with sand mixed in his paints. Like Progressive, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Fick was interested in the facture that distinguished art from photography.

1931 was Fick’s banner year. “Picture of a Boy” was reproduced in Querschnitt, Berlin and “The Concert Nr. 1” in Cahiers d’Art, Paris. Once the Nazis came into power Fick pulled back his art activities to escape notice as a former socialist and dada artist. He took the art work he’d salvaged from his sister Angelika Hoerle’s apartment and hid it in the garden shed of his atelier in Vogelsang, an outskirt of Cologne. The artists represented in his cache, Max Ernst, Hoerle and Seiwert, had already been labelled degenerate and it was dangerous to possess their works. Fick continued to work for the City of Cologne but ceased exhibiting. Thanks to the Rhenisch Archives photos, Fick’s strongest works survive as black and white images. According to Fick’s post-war claim for restitution, 40-45 oil paintings and over 70 watercolours and drawings were destroyed in the last years of the war, by the bombing of Cologne Oct 31, 1944 and by the March 1945 looting of recently released foreign labourers.

A Dadaist in Whitby

In 1945 Fick started designing hospitals and public buildings for the High Rise Division of the City of Cologne. In recognition for his success as an artist, he was given one day off per week to pursue his art. He did not actively pursue exhibition but he did show works at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in 1959-60, at the Duesseldorf Museum in 1960 and occasionally in the Aloys Faust Gallery. When his only living relative, his nephew Frank Eggert, moved to Whitby, Ontario, Fick began the first of six three month visits; these took place between 1954 and 1967. During his time in Whitby Fick painted. Applying the eyes of his European art experiences to the Canadian landscape Fick created a unique European-Canadian fusion. When he retired from the City of Cologne in 1956 Fick travelled extensively during which time he regaled his Canadian family with illustrated letters. The letters demonstrate Fick’s life-long love of cartooning. By the mid 60s Fick’s emphysema slowed down art and travel. He managed to execute black marker sketches of scenes in Whitby and two days before his death he was installed by Professor Michel Sanouillet as an honourary member of the International Dada and Surrealism Association in recognition of his contributions to dada in Cologne. Willy Fick was buried in Whitby Oct 5, 1967.

Willy Fick’s Legacy

When Willy Fick paid the back rent on his deceased sister Angelika Hoerle’s apartment on Bachemerstrasse in Lindenthal in 1923 he saved her works and those left behind by Max Ernst, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert and Heinrich Hoerle. When he hid nearly 300 items, he saved a time capsule of the dada time period from Nazi destruction. Thanks to the family of his nephew Frank Eggert (Dr. Frank-Michael Eggert, Angelika Littlefield and spouses), the Fick-Eggert Collection at the AGO in Toronto acts as a permanent art historical resource.

When Willy Fick had his 1928-1931 works photographed by the Rhenish Picture Archive, he left a record of works that show the blend of styles in Cologne during the Weimar period prior to and during Nazi persecution. These photographic records inspired The Art of Dissent: Willy Fick in 2008 showing that even persecution and war cannot not destroy the messages Fick’s works hold for future generations.

Fick Work Exhibited or displayed:

"Golgotha Passion", Cologne Applied Arts Museum, Feb 1920; Ongoing Stupid exhibitions, Hildeboldplatz, Cologne summer 1920 (works listed in Stupid 1 catalogue; Gruppe D section of exhibition at Cologne Art Institute, Nov 1920 (Fick was listed as a diletante); "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", Brauhaus Winter exbition, April 1920 (Fick was the vulgar diletante); "Juried by Ourselves", Cologne Applied Arts Museum, Nov 1922; "Religious Themes", May 1923; "Diabolo" 1928; "Boy with Train", "Diabolo" and "Mother Ey", 1930; "Boy with Train" reproduced in Querschnitt, Berlin 1931; "Concert Number 1" reproduced in Cahiers d'Art, Paris 1931; Works by Willy Fick, City Art Museum, Dusseldorf March to April 1931; Work in Wallraf-Richartz Museum Cologne, 1959-60; Work in City Art Museum, Dusseldorf 1960; Works exhibited in Aloys Faust Gallery in Cologne, 1960; "Graveside" in The World According to Dada, Taipei Fine Arts Museum June to Aug 1988; Works exhibited in The Dada Period in Cologne, Art Gallery of Ontario, Sept to Nov 1988; Works exhibited in The Art of Dissent, Lonsdale Gallery Nov 2009; Works exhibited in Angelika Hoerle, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and Museum Ludwig, Cologne 2009. PRism Magazine

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