Edmund Kesting

Who is Edmund Kesting?

Edmund Kesting was a German photographer, painter and art professor.

He studied until 1916 at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts before participating as a soldier in the First World War, upon returning his painting teachers were Richard Müller and Otto Gussmann and in 1919 he began to teach as a professor at the private school Der Weg. In 1923 he had his first exposition in the gallery Der Sturm in which he showed photograms. When Der Weg opened a new academy in Berlin in 1927, he moved to the capital.

He formed relations with other vanguardists in Berlin and practiced various experimental techniques such as solarization, multiple images and photograms, for which reason twelve of his works were considered degenerate art by the Nazi regime and were prohibited. Among the artists with whom he interacted are Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky and Alexander Archipenko.

At the end of World War II he formed part of a Dresden artistic group known as Künstlergruppe der ruf - befreite Kunst along with Karl von Appen, Helmut Schmidt-Kirstein and Christoph Hans, among others.