François Willi Wendt

Wendt suddenly died at his home, on 15 May 1970, at the age of 60.

In 1968, he finally obtained French nationality. Since his arrival in France, thirty years before, he already belonged to it in his heart. He owned his naturalization to the intervention, support, and testimonies of Robert Minder, Professor at the College de France; Bernard Dorival, Head Curator at the Musée National d'Art Moderne; Roger Van Gindertael, art critic; and painters Olivier Debré, Roger Bissière, and Pierre Soulages.

With these brief notes published in 1947 in the first album of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, François Willi Wendt foresaw the indomitable dynamism of his evolution. But he did so reservedly: as he defied the systematisation of geometric abstraction, at times he also resisted being tempted by the subjectivity of lyrical abstraction. “For fifteen years (1938–1953), I have been dependent on graphism. From the beginning, I have been seeking the objective. Through this quest, I have discovered structure.” In this structure, Wendt could see the constituting elements of the pictural space, with tension and density as attributes.

Wendt continued his pictural research directed to the pre-war field of abstract art and joined the rapidly reconstituting artistic movement in Paris. He took part in the tradition of the Salon des Surindépendants and participated in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles from its foundation in 1946. In the latter, he took an active hand in welcoming German painters who, after being stigmatized and even persecuted by the Nazi regime, had continued their creative activity. In 1949, he began a friendship with Roger Van Gindertael, co-founder and former editor of the review Cimaise, editor of the Parisian pages of Beaux Arts (Bruxelles), and art critic of the newspaper Combat. He remained in a precarious condition: limited by his status as a stateless person, having only temporary permissions of stay in France, and experiencing fluctuations in income and resources.

After the war ended in 1945, Wendt returned to Paris and married Greiner.

As Europe became embroiled in World War II, Wendt was in and out of incarceration. In 1938, he was interned as “undesirable alien” at the La Santé Prison (Paris). After his release on poet Robert Desnos’s intervention and with additional support from artist Robert Delaunay, he was allowed to stay in Paris with the status of political refugee. From September 1939, he experienced a series of French internment/concentration camps for stateless persons, first at Orléans and Cepoy (near Montargis), then at the Camp des Milles, and then Nîmes. He escaped from the Nimes camp with some friends in the summer of 1940. He then took refuge in Marseille and went underground. Considered as a fugitive from Germany, he was again interned from October 1941 to March 1942 at the work camp of Aubagne, where he was incorporated as a “prestataire” in the 829e GTRE until his dismissal as unfit for health reasons. When German control extended to the south of France at the end of 1942, Wendt took clandestine refuge at Grenoble in the spring of 1943. He was again incarcerated for four weeks in September 1943 in the disciplinary prison of Chapoly in Lyon. Recommended by active members of the French Resistance to Professor Robert Minder of Grenoble University and P. Andry-Farcy, head curator at the Museum of Grenoble, Wendt's protection was ensured when he obtained fake papers and an assistantship. He lived until the end of the war under the name of “François Aymon” in Grenoble, in nearby La Tronche, and later at Monestier-de-Clermont.

In 1937 his opposition to the Hitlerian regime forced him to go into exile. He left Germany for Paris, France, where he arrived in September with his friend, painter Greta Saur/Sauer. For a while he frequented Fernand Léger’s studio and was introduced to Wassily Kandinsky, Robert Delaunay, Otto Freundlich, and Serge Poliakoff. He took part in exhibition groups and, until the declaration of war, he also worked as a scenery painter, a language teacher, and a journalist.

In 1936 he was allowed to travel in Italy in order to improve his knowledge of archaeology. However, he also worked with painter Adolf Fleischmann, who was staying there, and Wendt ultimately chose to pursue painting.

His adhesion to the innovating ideas of abstract art found itself quite naturally associated to the perilous defence of democratic liberties, in particular to the artistic freedom increasingly curtailed by the rising Nazi regime. He was imprisoned by the Gestapo for proximity to Nazi opposition, then saw his friends either imprisoned or sent to the earliest concentration camps. For those reasons, he left the university at the doctorate level in 1934.

From 1928 to 1934, he studied at university while pursuing art on the side. He sat philosophy (with Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger), English and German literature, and history of art at the Universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Freiburg-im-Breisgau. In a parallel direction he started drawing and painting. His first abstract attempts date back to 1931. For some time, he frequented painter Julius Bissier’s studio.

François Willi Wendt (16 November 1909 – 15 May 1970) was a French non-figurative painter of German origin belonging to the New Ecole de Paris. After self-exile from Germany in 1937, he adopted France as his native country. In France he became “one of the best and most personal painters of his generation, an artist of great purity and strong culture. His self-exactness, lack of pretension and moral sense delayed the fame he deserved". In collective exhibitions he was associated with the most famous painters of the New Ecole de Paris, particularly Roger Bissière, André Lanskoy, Serge Poliakoff, Pierre Soulages, and Nicolas de Staël. He is also associated with many better-known painters today.

Willi Wendt was born on 16 November 1909 into a simple family living in Berlin, Germany. He was awarded a scholarship at the Berlin high school “Zum Grauen Kloster” and carried on his secondary studies until obtaining his Abitur in 1928.