Fritz Neumann: “My favourite thing to paint is what I see …

Sailboats for millionaires and birds for himself

Fritz Neumann is the opposite of Erich Wladimir Weger. But when Weger calls for a political painter, Neumann shakes his head: “A painter doesn’t have to be political at all.” And where Weger tries to provoke the viewer with the red colour, Neumann paints purple because purple is modern, it sells better - “in the past I would probably have used green-blue.” While Weger dreams of realising his ideas, Neumann strives to make the sailing boats of millionaires as lifelike as possible.

Admittedly, it would be unfair to accuse Fritz Neumann of disdainful materialism. Because he likes to paint what he has to paint. The secret of freedom. His watercolours and etchings range stylistically from naturalism to cubism and abstract motifs. Although the cubist paintings, reminiscent of Feininger the sailor, are of artistic merit and hint at inspirations that point beyond the façade of the recognisable, Neumann explains: “I prefer to paint what I see.” What he sees are sailing boats.

And so different styles coexist on an equal footing in his paintings. As a sail painter, Neumann - as he says himself - has little competition to fear. For this reason, and because of his own enthusiasm for water sports, the boats on the Havel are his professional motif. But he also has a private motif: birds, ripe for scientific illustrations. That’s probably what those responsible at the “Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung” thought at the time when they recruited Fritz Neumann as an employee.

Fritz was born into the imperial world in December 1897 and had the misfortune of having a father who did not give him an artist’s name. Neumann. But talent is ultimately the deciding factor, and so the gifted teenager enjoyed an art school education from 1912 to 1916, the tween was in the trenches of Verdun during the First World War, ran an advertising studio after his return home and then decided to become a freelance painter and etcher in 1930. Neumann was involved in the Second World War right from the start, but it wasn’t so bad for him: “I painted more during the war than I fought. My company commander was a professor, and he was very understanding.”

After the Second World War, he switched from the drypoint technique to the etching technique for his etchings. The Spandau Art Office wrote last summer that Neumann had “a strictly composed cathedral style. The influence of earlier years is unmistakable in his use of glass mosaic”. The artist commented that the copper etching itself to a certain extent prescribes a strict style, stylising the motif.

Strict or not strict Artist Neumann can make a good living from his paintings, which are sold by the art collections Amsler & Ruthardt and Vagart & Co. Sailing boats for the millionaires, Spandau motifs “for the people” and birds for himself.

However, Mrs Hedwig Neumann, who met her husband at art school, was taken with flora. She painted radiant sunflowers under her maiden name Hede Klinge. She also works for a publisher, but does not compete with her husband. Hede Klinge does not paint sailboats.

• When Fritz Neumann sits in Bocksfelde and observes the Havel, swiftly running his brush over the canvas on his easel, he likes it when curious travellers debate the problems of art with the master - problems that Fritz Neumann does not have. He brought back impressions and sketches from his long journeys, which he repeatedly returned to in charcoal and pastel: Sturdy fishing boats in Greece, ships on the canals in Venice, at the pier in Cuxhaven or Amsterdam, on the rivers of Paris.

He can’t let it go, it has taken hold of him, once and for all, definitively, irrevocably. And the buyers appreciate the fact that Fritz Neumann is a professional and knows exactly what the rigging should look like. That is very useful.

UWE-MICHAEL TROPPENZ

Fritz Neumann and his sailing boats: “I like to paint what I have to paint”, he says. (Pictures: Franke)