August Wilhelm Dressler

(1886-1970)

August Wilhelm Dressler was born in Bettelgrün, Bohemia, in 1886 and finished his apprenticeship in Chemnitz in 1904 and initially worked as a lithographer. In 1909 he began studying at the Dresden Art Academy with Richard Müller, who was also Otto Dix’s student. Just one year later, Dreßler switched to the academy in Leipzig. After completing his studies, he moved to Berlin as a freelance artist in 1914. Military service interrupted his artistic development, which he was only able to continue in 1918 after his return to Leipzig. In 1924 he moved back to Berlin, where he became a member of the Berlin Secession and joined the „November group“. In the following years Dressler took part in numerous exhibitions, including at the exhibition „Neue Sachlichkeit“ in the Kunsthalle Mannheim as well as at various exhibitions of the „Novembergruppe“ and the Deutscher Künstlerbund. During this time he also received his first awards, including the Rome Prize of the Prussian Academy of the Arts in 1927 and the Albrecht Dürer Prize of the City of Nuremberg in 1928. Two years later he was awarded a one-year scholarship for the Villa Massimo in Rome. From 1934 on, Dressler held a position as a teacher at the United State School in Berlin – a position that he lost again four years later due to the National Socialist cultural policy. After the Second World War he worked again in his adopted home Berlin, where he was awarded the city’s art prize in 1955 in recognition of his achievements. From 1956 on, Dressler is regularly represented with his work at the „Great Berlin Art Exhibition“. The artist died in Berlin in 1970.

August Dressler is one of the painters of the ‚New Objectivity‘. He is one of the lesser-known artists of the Weimar era, but like his famous contemporaries Georg Grosz, John Heartfield and Otto Dix, he too felt obliged to social and political issues.

In his work, the figurative wins through the ability to objectify feeling without phrases. Dressler paints neither to be modern nor to appear original. His view is essential in a solid sense; it focuses on things, elements and events that reflect a piece of life.

In Dressler’s work, the closeness to the object and the bond with the figure correspond to the continuity of the painting. One is tempted to speak less of development and more of unfolding before painting from five decades. The thematic inventory is there from the beginning as a creed and basic motif: the form is added as the painter’s answer. It is Dressler’s personal advantage not to want to correct reality, but also not to imitate it – his realism coincides form and content, sensation and insight in an informal way.

Dressler feels, thinks and argues clearly more generally; his work is not an illustration of social misery or individual depravity. This „realist of the sharper key‘ ‘“ reaches beyond the limits of genre and folklore; his „petty-bourgeois everyday life“ is neither exhausted in poor people pathos nor in oh-human ecstasy. The sober sense of reality and solid knowledge promote an opinion that confirms the artistic rapport in its own way. “Whoever masters the keyboard of nature‘ ‘, Dressler proclaims,“ can play their own tunes ‘‘.

Source: Delp’sche Verlagbuchhandlung Munich (ed.), August Wilhelm Dressler, Munich 1970.

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