35 Facts About Werner Drewes

Werner Drewes was a painter, printmaker, and art teacher.

Walden produced the quarterly magazine, Der Sturm and ran a gallery of contemporary art, Galerie Der Sturm, from which, in 1919, Werner Drewes purchased an expressionist painting by William Wauer titled Blutrausch.

In 1919 Werner Drewes enrolled at the Koniglich Technischen Hochschule Charlottenburg to study architecture and the following year he studied the same subject at the Technischen Hochschule Stuttgart.

Werner Drewes's instructors were Johannes Itten and Lyonel Feininger, whose paintings were expressionist and abstract, and Paul Klee, who taught bookbinding, stained glass, and murals.

Werner Drewes later said the El Grecos he saw proved to be most influential in his work.

Werner Drewes paid his way by the sales these exhibits produced and by taking commissions to paint portraits.

In 1931 Werner Drewes participated in the Societe Anonyme's exhibition at the Albright Art Center, Buffalo, New York and the Rand School.

Werner Drewes has emotions and they take hold of him and lead him at times into paintings that are highly unconventional.

Howard Devree of The New York Times praised the oils, watercolors, and drawings that Werner Drewes showed in his solo exhibition at the Morton Galleries in 1933.

In 1934 Werner Drewes began a long career as a teacher when he took a position teaching drawing and printmaking at the Brooklyn Museum Art School funded by the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration.

Werner Drewes later said he modeled his teaching method on the one that Kandinsky used.

Werner Drewes recalled that Kandinsky was a patient and nonjudgmental teacher who would challenge his students to work out their own solutions to non-objective projects he would set and ask them to discuss the reasons behind their choices.

In 1936, the year he became an American citizen, Werner Drewes became a founding member of both the anti-fascist American Artists' Congress and the avant-garde American Abstract Artists group.

In 1937 Werner Drewes exhibited at the East River Gallery in an innovative program that gave potential buyers the option of renting a work while deciding whether or not to buy it.

Werner Drewes remained there for the next three years teaching painting, drawing, and printmaking while making prints for the Graphic Arts Division of the WPA Federal Art Project in New York.

In 1940 Werner Drewes joined with Carl Holty to open an art school called the Department of Abstract Art at the Master Institute of United Arts.

Werner Drewes wrote that Drewes was a clever artist who could give a human and emotional content to abstract art thus overcoming the sterility that characterized most non-objective art.

In 1944 and 1945 Werner Drewes worked at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 in New York City.

Werner Drewes's work has appeared in group exhibitions throughout the years of World War II and in 1945 a solo exhibition at the Kleemann Gallery attracted unusual critical notice.

In 1945 Werner Drewes taught design, printmaking, and photography at Brooklyn College and then shifted to Chicago where he joined with Moholy-Nagy to teach at the Institute of Design.

Once settled in St Louis, Werner Drewes attained a level of financial stability that had until then eluded him.

Werner Drewes painted two smaller mural on the wings of the house.

Werner Drewes retired in 1965 and moved to Reston, Virginia, where he remained active as an artist until his death in 1985.

Werner Drewes enjoyed great recognition for his work in these later years.

Werner Drewes was born on July 27,1899, in what was then Canig, Lower Lusatia, Brandenburg, Germany, and is Kaniow, Lubusz Voivodeship, Poland.

Werner Drewes's name is almost always given as simply Werner Drewes, but his full name was Werner Bernhard Drewes and he is sometimes referred to as Werner B Drewes.

Werner Drewes was the son of Pastor Georg Drewes and his wife Martha Schaefer Drewes.

Werner Drewes attended boarding school at the Saldria Gymnasium in Brandenburg an der Havel from 1907 to 1917.

Werner Drewes spent some time at the Barkenhoff artists' commune.

Werner Drewes completed his education at Bauhaus, where he studied from 1921 to 1923 in Weimar and from 1927 to 1930 in Dessau.

Werner Drewes's father was Max Schrobsdorff and her mother, Martha Wreger Schrobsdorff.

In 1935 Werner Drewes began his long teaching career with a position at the Brooklyn Museum School and in 1936 he became a citizen of the United States.

Margaret Werner Drewes died in St Louis on September 27,1959.

In 1965 Werner Drewes retired from Washington University in St Louis and moved to Point Pleasant, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Werner Drewes moved to Reston, Virginia, in 1972 and died there on June 21,1985.