Portrait, female head

Joachim Utech's composition depicts a young woman's head that seems to emerge from the mist, from an undefined space, as if she were a ghost. The woman has a high forehead, a long straight nose, a small mouth and a triangular chin. The eyes under slightly outlined eyebrows are staring at something outside the frame of the composition. The graphic was presumably made in the 1920s using the crayon lithographic technique and was printed with red paint on brown handmade paper. The artist signed it in pencil.Joachim Utech was born in 1889 in Białogard (Belgard) in Pomerania and died in 1960 in Marburg. He worked as a sculptor and draughtsman. After completing his education at the Białogard grammar school, he went to Berlin. There he became a pupil of the sculptor and graphic artist Georg Wrba. In 1907, he settled in Kołobrzeg (Kolberg) and worked as a volunteer in the atelier of the sculptor Franz Bräger. At the same time, he studied in Berlin at the Winter-Kunstschule des Westens (Winter School of Western Art) and the Kunsthochschule (Higher School of Art). During his studies, he performed his military service in Białogard, in the Pomeranian Artillery Regiment, and Gdańsk. He finished his studies in 1913 with a diploma as a teacher of drawing and manual works. Utech continued his studies in Leipzig at the Akademie für Graphische Künste und Buchgewerbe (Academy for Graphic Art and Book Craft). During the First World War, he was a front-line soldier. After the war, he took up artistic and pedagogical work in Leipzig, Insterburg (Wystruć now Chernyakhovsk in the Kaliningrad region), and then in Białogard. He made study trips to Scandinavia, Lithuania, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Romania and Italy. He was the author of many sculptures which decorated public spaces in Pomeranian towns. He received commissions from Białogard, Sławno (Schlawe), Słupsk (Stolp), Kołobrzeg, and Lębork (Lauenburg). In 1936, he participated in the Venice Biennale. After the Second World War, he settled in Lüneburger Heide, where he was a secondary school teacher. When retired, he settled in Daxweiler and eventually in Marburg.

Ewa Gwiazdowska