Clara Vogedes

Clara Vogedes née Homscheidt (1892–1983) was a German painter.

Life Clara Vogedes was born into an upper-middle-class family in Krefeld. At the end of her school years she studied foreign languages in Rolle on Lake Geneva, graduating with the French diploma in interpreting. A visit in 1910 to an exhibition by Paula Modersohn-Becker inspired her to want to become a painter. She took lessons in watercolour painting with Henri Duvoisin in Geneva and later in oil painting with Henry van de Velde in Krefeld. (In her later years she painted very rarely in oils).

In 1917 she married the journalist, writer and homeland poet Alois Vogedes. Four daughters were born from their marriage.

Work

Her husband's republican leanings led to constant changes of employment and of places of residence. Alois worked as an editor for various newspapers, often also in the capacity of a journalist, in Hanover, Trier, Neunkirchen and Paderborn, among other locations. In each place Clara became part of the available literary and artistic circles, for instance in Hanover as part of the group around Kurt Schwitters, the central figure of "Hanover Dadaism", and in Paderborn as part of the group of poets that formed around her husband, sharing the legacy of Peter Hille.

In 1926 her husband was offered a position in Trier, where Clara Vogedes joined the Trier circle of painters. Her first solo exhibition took place in Trier in 1935. Shortly before the end of the war the family moved to Paderborn, where the city in ruins and the cathedral became her main topics.

"The watercolours of that time [...] show the remarkable mastery of the technique: delicate colour gradations, opalescent transitions from tone to tone, drastically contrasting shades of colour, dark accents, brittle, dry brush marks making visible the grain of the paper, then again the transparent overlapping of the colours in a sparse palette, the wiping of the colours, almost reminiscent of chalk drawings. The works are created briskly and with spontaneity, and always directly in front of the motif, they are 'works from the backpack', in Clara Vogedes' own words." In 1999 a street in Lünen was named after Clara Vogedes.

Influence Young artists remain interested in Clara Vogedes' work. The 2005 exhibition "Pictures from the Backpack - Pictures without Sketches", held at Studio Group Lünen in Heinz Cymontkowski's studio contrasted Clara Vogedes’ pictures with his own creations from 2000 onwards.

Two of her granddaughters have followed in her footsteps: Kristine Oßwald (1961-2017), draughtswoman and video artist, and Dr. Cornelia Oßwald-Hoffmann, art historian and freelance curator for contemporary art.

Selected works

Exhibitions