Theodor Werner
Born in Jettenburg in 1886, Theodor Werner is one of the most important representatives of abstract painting in Germany after 1945.
After training at the teacher training college in Kirchberg, Theodor Werner studied at the Stuttgart Academy under Robert Poetzelsberger in 1908/09 alongside his professional activities. From 1909 to 1914, he visited Paris several times for study purposes and received private training in the studio of Charles Guérin. After his military service in the First World War, Theodor Werner lived and worked as a freelance painter in Großsachsenheim near Stuttgart until 1929.
His initial paintings were still lifes and landscapes. His paintings from 1919 to 1929 were strongly influenced by the Impressionist style of Paul Cézanne. In 1930, he finally moved to Paris, where he became a member of the "Abstraction-Création" group of artists. A year later, he married the painter Anneliese Rütgers, known as Woty. After his return to Germany in 1935, Theodor Werner was banned from painting and exhibiting when the National Socialists seized power and was officially considered a "degenerate artist". During the war, he was conscripted as a technical draughtsman. During a bombing raid in the last year of the war, the majority of his life's work was destroyed. Werner spent the years 1946 to 1959 in Berlin, where he was a member of the "ZEN 49" group from 1950 to 1955. He was awarded the title of professor by the Berlin Academy of Arts. He became an honorary member and, in 1956, an honorary senator of the Academy of Fine Arts. Werner's works are represented in the collections of the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Stuttgart State Gallery, among others.
Theodor Werner bequeathed his artistic estate to the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich. In 1959, he moved to Munich, where he lived and worked until his death. Werner died in Munich in 1969.
