Filter, Erwin

painter

born: 17.08.1904 in Stettin

died: 21.01.1987 in Wiesbaden

Filter initially completed an apprenticeship as an electrical mechanic, which he completed with a journeyman's certificate in 1923. At the same time, he secretly attended the Szczecin School of Crafts and Arts and Crafts. He used the four first prizes he won in a competition to finance a study trip to Spain. On the way back via Paris, he gained important impressions of French painting. From 1927 onwards, he lived as a freelance artist in Berlin. In 1930, he returned to Paris for the second time for a longer stay. In 1934, he was able to utilize his Parisian impressions for numerous landscape paintings in the Baltic States, especially in Reval. In 1934, he married Ilse Böninger, with whom he acquired a property in Oderberg/Mark. There he built a house according to his own designs, which he moved into in 1936. The house "on the Teufelsberg" with its magnificent view of the Oderbruch earned him a prize and inclusion in the book "Landhäuser" (H.J. Zechlin, Berlin 1937). Between 1937 and 1939 he took part in exhibitions in Berlin, Karlsruhe, Cologne, Mannheim and Stuttgart. The beginning of the Second World War forced him into military service in 1940, first in Russia and then in Norway. There he created charming watercolor landscapes. But his actual career as a painter was interrupted. The paintings stored in the Berlin gallery von der Heyde were destroyed in a bombing raid. He returned to Oderberg/Mark from captivity as a prisoner of war in 1946.

In 1950, the family moved from the GDR to Wiesbaden. Here Filter made the transition from late impressionism to informal painting in the circle of Ernst Wilhelm Nay and the Frankfurt artists' group Quadriga. For a time he was a member of the artists' group 50. Strictly composed oil paintings, colored chalks and large-format gouaches form the zenith of his oeuvre. Several exhibitions in Krefeld, Frankfurt, Helsinki and Offenbach as well as his participation in the highly acclaimed exhibition "Glanz und Gestalt" by Clemens Weiler at the Museum Wiesbaden in 1955 and in the show "Kunst in Hessen" at the Darmstädter Kunsthalle in 1965 brought his work to the public's attention. His oeuvre is characterized by color and form in exciting harmony.

His estate, including a catalog raisonné, is held by his children Katharina von Bismarck in Wiesbaden and Dr. Paul Michael Filter in Munich. Filter was buried in the North Cemetery.