WERNER DREWES

WERNER DREWES | 1899-1985

Werner Drewes initially studied architecture before enrolling in 1921-22 at the Bauhaus in Weimar under Klee, Kandinsky, Itten, and Feininger. For four years – 1923 to 1927 – he traveled the world with his bride, before completing his Bauhaus training in Dessau in 1929. He emigrated to the United States in 1930, documenting that move to New York through a series of woodcuts. In 1936-37, he was an active founder of the American Abstract Artists and participated in the Federal Arts Project in New York before moving on to a teaching career at Washington University in St. Louis.

As an artist for over 65 years, he employed various media from drawing and watercolor, through woodcut and etching, to painting and collage. Translating an early interest in subjective cubist forms, his work evolved into nonobjective abstraction. He was creative until the day of his death.