Ulrich Neujahr Biography

Ulrich Neujahr

German

1898-1977

Biography

Painter and printmaker Ulrich Neujahr was born in Landsberg an der Warthe, Germany on June 20, 1898. At the age of twelve he and his family relocated to Wilmersdorf where he attended the Joachim-Friedrich high school, graduating in 1917. That same year he was called up as a Reserve Leiutenant in the First World War and in 1918 he was badly wounded at Verdun and sent back to Wilmersdorf. After his recuperation one year later he enrolled in architecture course at the Technical University of Berlin, graduating with an intermediate diploma in 1920; he followed this with courses at the State School for Free and Applied Arts as well as the State Art School, both in Berlin.

In 1924 he began participating in exhibitions, starting with the Berlin Artists' Association's Jury-Free Art Exhibition, and regularly showed his work throughout Germany thereafter. Beginning in 1926, after completion of his studies, he took a teaching post at the Walter-Rathau high school, where he would continue to teach until 1944. In the late 1920s he met Bauhaus artist Charlotte Voepel, who was then a student of Wassily Kandinksy and Josef Albers, and they married in 1938, eventually having two children. From 1944 to 1945 taught in Konin, Poland. Following the end of the Second World War he returned to Germany and worked as a painter in Weimar, taking a position part time at a women's college and continuing to exhibit. Between the wars and after, he traveled regularly to various cities and villages on the Mediterranean Sea, particularly the island of Ischia and the city of Sant'Angelo, Italy. These landscapes, cityscapes, and images of daily life would become regular subjects of Neujahr's work. 

He continued to teach until his retirement in 1963, at which point he spent much of his time in Sant'Angelo. He often worked with artists Werner Gilles, Eduard Bargheer, and Hermann Poll in the studio he had built on the coast. His final painting was created there in the summer of 1977. He died in Berlin on October 9 of that same year.

Exhibitions:
1924 Jury-free art exhibition, Berlin

1927 Art Association, Gotha; Exhibition of the Dürerbund, Osnabrück
1928 Art Association, Würzburg
1931 International Club, Berlin
1932 Association of Wilmersdorf Artists, Berlin

1933 Association of Wilmersdorf Artists, Spring Exhibition and Christmas Exhibition, Berlin

1934 Artists of West Berlin, Berlin

1935 Artists of West Berlin, Berlin
1943 Association of West Berlin Artists, Leipzig

1945 workers from Thuringia, Weimar

1946 General German Art Exhibition, Dresden

1946
The Child. Exhibition of fine arts in the Palace of Weimar, Weimar

1946 art exhibition in the Landesmuseum, Weimar

1947 1st State Exhibition of Thuringia, Erfurt
; Central German Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig; Thuringian Art Exhibition, Neustadt/Orla; 2nd Schmölln art exhibition, Schmölln; 1947 Walter Cares Gallery, Berlin
1948
artists create. Exhibition in the Palace of Weimar, Weimar
; Thuringian state art exhibition, Meiningen; Gallery Cares Kurfürstendamm 211, Berlin
1949 General German Art Exhibition, Dresden

1969 IOS, Berlin

1971
The Twenties. Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin