Artist 40: Hermann Glockner

Hermann Glöckner was born in 1889 in Dresden.  In 1903 he attended the vocational school in Leipzig and worked as a designer for textiles.  Then in 1904 he began attending evening classes at Kunstgewerbeschule in Dresden, he attended these classes until 1911.  Glöckner was very interested in drawings as well as in projections and geometry.  From 1914 to 1918 he served his time in the military as an infantryman.  He then studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts from 1923 to 1924.  Because of his experimental style, his work was not fully accepted by his fellow artists and he left the Academy.  This rejection caused him to dive deeper into constructivist artwork.  He became a member of the Dresdner Sezession, but because the Nazis refused to allow him to exhibit or sell his work, he turned to grafitto to make a living.  When Dresden was bombed in World War II he lost his home and then moved to Loschwitz.  At this time the German Democratic Republic did not appreciate his formalist style and his lack of artistic appreciation continued.  Then in 1969 his work was exhibited in Dresden and in 1979 he received a permanent visa for the Federal Republic of Germany.  In his later years, Glöckner visited West Berlin frequently and in 1987 he dies in West Berlin.