Auguste Endell, Architect of the Month, May 2016

August Endell was born on 12 April 1871 and grew up in Berlin. In 1892 he went to the University of Munich to study aesthetics, philosophy and art. Always an intellectual he became interested in the aesthetics of art and design and wrote a number of papers on the subject including 'On Beauty' in 1896 which can be considered an anticipation of abstract art. He befriended Jugendstijl sculptor and designer Hermann Obrist who influenced and encouraged him to move from academia.

A self-taught artist, Endell began working on translating his theories into architecture and the built environment and in 1896 received his first commission. Endell's design for the façade and interior of the Hofatelier Elvira, an existing building in Munich

Interior of Hofatelier Elvira 

which he embellished with typically turbulent Jugendstijl forms and motifs, made him famous overnight. The Atelier was to be run as a photographers' and artists' studio by Anita Augspurg and Sophia Goudstikker and was said to have been the first such business in Germany created and run by women. The building was vandalised by the Nazis and later destroyed by bombing during WWII.     

From 1898 Endell joined other artists and designers in the Munich arts and crafts movement where he became regarded as an innovative leader. He continued to publish articles and papers including in 1901 on "Originality and Tradition". At the same time he moved from Munich to Berlin which encouraged him to move from the flamboyance of Jugendstijl design and towards Modernism. He contributed to the design of the Theater Bunte, in Berlin Germany, which has since been destroyed.

Portrait 'Adrian and Tom, Brighton College of Art, 1970' - Picture of the Week 24 November 2013

Art Students at work in the second floor fine art studio
 

I spent a year at Brighton, finding out that I wasn't a painter. I spent more and more time taking photographs and printing them in the darkrooms there. This is one, a portrait of fellow students at work, doing what I couldn't - putting paint on canvas and knowing what they wanted to represent. At the time I had some of the technique but none of the necessary imagination.

 

This is the sort of portrait photo I like to take. I don't take many formal portraits, I don't find them very interesting to create. I much prefer photographing people doing what they do. Some people call this documentary photography, but I believe a photograph which tells you about what people do, can also tell you who they are and that is portraiture.