Kurt Kranz

Biography

Publicity. Born Kurt Peter Wilhelm Kranz 3 May 1910 in Emmerich am Rhein. Apprenticed as a lithographer while taking evening classes (to 1926) at the Bielefeld Kunstgewerbeschule where he became interested in lettering and photography. From April 1929: studied at the Bauhaus, Dessau: teachers included Paul Klee, Joost Schmitt, Josef Albers, Kandinsky; photography – ‘picture sequences’ – influenced by Moholy-Nagy. 1930: traveled in North Africa. 1932-6: worked at the Dorland agency, Berlin, where he collaborated with Herbert Bayer designing advertisements, exhibition stands, journal titles, the journal die neue linie and other projects. During this time he was interrogated by the police but, receiving good references from Bayer and Albers, he was able to obtain his artist’s licence from the Reichskulturamt which enabled him to continue working. From 1939: freelance.

‘I had had built a studio-house in Berlin to which I could be free from the daily advertising work,…then, in the war, lost that freedom to the Nazis.’ (quoted from Hofmann, 1990, p. 205) From 1940: military service; war artist in Norway and Finland; the latter experience led to Winteralltag im Urwald Lapplands, a book of 38 drawings made at the Front while serving with the army. The book was published by Wilhelm Limpert Verlag, Berlin, 1944. c1944: prisoner-of-war. 1946: returned to Berlin.

From 1949: taught at the Hamburg Landeskunstschule. 1954-5: designed postage stamps for the Deutsche Bundespost. 1955-72: taught at the Hamburg Hochschule für bildende Künste (HfbK) (1960: head of class of applied art; 1972: Professor Emeritus). 1957: guest lecturer, Tulane University, New Orleans. 1965: guest lecturer, University of California, Santa Barbara. 1966: guest lecturer, Academy of Honolulu. 1967-8: guest lecturer, Harvard University. Also guest-lectured in Japan. Many of the forms in his later paintings suggest a very individual calligraphy; he also produced poetry in typographic arrangements. He wrote that his teaching approach was based on that of Klee and Albers. Died August 1997 in Wedel near Hamburg.