The
Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special Collections,
is pleased to announce the exhibition Johannes Lebek: The
Artist As a Witness of His Time. This event celebrates
the work of Lebek (1901-1985), a renowned master of the woodcut
and one of Germany's finest, although lesser-known, 20th-century
illustrators. With an emphasis on documenting the artist's life
and production, the exhibition will feature prints, illustrated
books, photographs, sketchbooks, and manuscript material. Curated
by Elisabeth Wegner, the artist's daughter, Johannes Lebek:
The Artist As a Witness of His Time will be on view at
Stanford University's Cecil H. Green Library, Peterson Gallery,
second floor of the Bing Wing from April 15 through June 30,
2002. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Born in Zeitz,
Germany, in 1901 to working class parents, Lebek was a prolific
artist working in the Northern Romantic tradition whose emerging
sensibilities were influenced by his country's strong graphic
arts traditions and the rise of German Expressionism. Despite
experiencing the turmoil of poverty, two world wars, and life
under the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, Lebek's illustrious
career as an artist began with studies at the prestigious
Leipzig Academie für graphische Künste und Buchgewerbe
(Academy for the Graphic Arts and Book Production) under the
direction of German woodcut and engraving master Hans Alexander
Mueller. Lebek became a woodcut instructor at the Academie
in the 1950s, and he, along with colleague Frans Masereel,
was a founding member of the Xylon International Society of
Wood Engravers. In 1969 he emigrated to Adelebsen, West Germany,
and began a new phase of vigorous productivity.
By the time of
his death in 1985, Lebek was credited with supporting a revival
of the woodcut medium in Leipzig in the 1960s and 1970s. He
had produced single prints, topical cycles and portfolios
of prints, children's books, an important woodcut primer,
and illustrations to books-including several literary classics-by
approximately fifty authors.
The exhibition
will highlight prints and other works of graphic art that
focus on biographical and religious themes, and the depiction
of landscapes-both urban and rural-from Lebek's childhood
through his later adult life. A poignant sketchbook diary,
created during Lebek's internment in an American POW camp
in France, will also be featured, along with examples of illustrated
book works by his contemporaries Fritz Kredel, Fritz Eichenberg,
Käthe Kollwitz, Frans Masereel, and Hans Alexander Mueller.
In conjunction
with the exhibition, the Stanford University Libraries announces
the 
publication
of the exhibition catalogue Johannes Lebek: The Artist
As a Witness of His Time. With text by Ronald Salter,
Professor of German Literature and Art at Tufts University,
and several illustrations including a letterpress printing
of four previously unpublished woodcuts from the cycle Tagzeiten
(Times of the day), the publication is available for $27.50
per copy plus tax and shipping. To order copies, please visit
our publications web site
or contact the Department of Special Collections, Green Library,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6004; attn: Lisa Marie
Hall, phone 650-725-1021 ;email speccollpubs@stanford.edu.
Images:
top left: woodcut by Johannes Lebek from Die schwarze
Spinne, 1939, courtesy Elisabeth Wegner; bottom right:
woodcut by Johannes Lebek from Straßen und Brücken,
1932, courtesy Elisabeth Wegner.
