THE ERNESTO FREDERICO
SCHEFFEL FOUNDATION
Introduction
By
Rolf Zelmanowicz
Scheffel
has a many-sided artistic sensibility, which he expresses both through
the plastic arts and music.
He
was born to be a man of the arts. Amid the impatient human banality
and the fast technological consumerism of our times, he has always
looked beyond the modern man.
He
is rather challenging and provoking as he produces art with the
talent and the technique he has been developing since he was a boy,
with refreshing creativity on current issues and the competent over-refinement
of the great masters.
Very
much as the light of a glowing star travels for years or centuries
to reach the Earth, Scheffel is aware that his art will likely take
some time to reach our world, which he came into to enrich.
THE
FOUNDATION
A
Space Destined to Art
Built
in 1890 by Adão Adolf Schmitt, the old neoclassic-style manor house
is the current home to the Scheffel Foundation. Today housing more
than 385 works by Ernesto Frederico Scheffel, it stands out as one
of the world’s largest art galleries to display works by a single
artist.
Ernesto
Frederico Scheffel Foundation
Av. General Daltro
filho, 911
Novo Hamburgo, Rs, Brazil
Tel.: (51) 593-6233
e-mail: museuscheffel@sinos.net
Board
of Directors
Ernesto
Frederico Scheffel – Life President
Rolf Zelmanowicz
- Executive Director
Carlos Emílio Lipp - Vice
Executive Director
Ângelo
Reinheimer - Curator
Visiting
hours
Tue
thru Fri: 8:30-11:30am/1:30-5:00pm
Sat
and Sun: 10:00am-5:00pm
Schools
and study groups are welcome.
THE
LIFE OF E. F. SCHEFFEL
Although
he lived in Florence, Italy for 37 years (1959-1996) and has now
retreated to a house he himself restored, in Valle del Sercchio
(Lucca Province), Scheffel continues connected to Brazil through
the cultural world, his family and friends. He is currently the
life president of the institution bearing his name and is charged
with the custody of the artistic and historical heritage of The
E. F. Scheffel Foundation Art Museum and The Johann Peter Schmitt
Community Museum, in Novo Hamburgo, RS, Brazil.
His
family descends from immigrants from Berghausen, Wittgensteiner
Land, Westfalia, Germany, who arrived in Brazil in 1825.
E.
F. Scheffel, the fifth generation in Rio Grande do Sul of the immigrant
Johann Christian Scheffel Junior and wife Anna Maria Müsse, was
born in Campo Bom on the 8th October 1927.
In
1950, his artistic penchant revealed, he was granted a scholarship
by the State of Rio Grande do Sul . He was then 22 years-old and
started his artistic struggle by participating each year at the
National Hall of Fine Arts as a personal assistant to the great
painter Oswaldo Teixeira – director of the Fine Arts Museum, Rio
de Janeiro.
Between
1951 and 1958 Scheffel was awarded the Great Bronze and Silver
medals and the Foreign Trip Prize by the National Hall of Fine Arts,
Rio de Janeiro. Finally, he was awarded the Gold Medal and leaves
for Europe in May 1959, where he visited and studied the mainstream
artists and museums in Portugal, Spain, France, England, Belgium,
the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Italy (Florence), where he
settled down.
1959-1960
– Practices sculpture, producing the “Horse Study” at the workroom
of Professor Antonio Berti who invited the student to work at his
studio, in Sesto Fiorentino, becoming one of his closest friends.
He then perfected the technique of relief with Professor G. Albano
as well as artistic nude, printing and fresco. His creative life
is complete with a studio, an easel for painting and a piano for
musical composition.
1960
The Uffizzi Gallery,
owing to a lack of space, maintained two restoration laboratories
for the Florence works of art. One of the gallery’s heads, Prof.
August Vermehren, after careful examination of some of the photographic
reproductions by the gaucho artist in Rio de Janeiro, such as “Jerônimo”,
“Tríptico”, “Hamburgo Velho”, “Rixa Gaúcha”, gets in touch
with Scheffel. Prof. Vermehren happens to have a renowned masterpiece
on his easel and tries to buy some time. The “Fours Philosophers”
by P. P. Rubens in the Pitti Gallery is in such bad condition that
the Tuscany director general summons the Rome director general –
as a result a 15-member team made up of Italian specialist professors
is sent to share the responsibility of this precious oil canvas
in “a dreadful state”. Vermehren then invites Scheffel for a pictorial
restoration test of the “Portrait of Bianca Cappello”. His work
examined and approved by the commission, Scheffel is authorized
to take part in the restoration team. During the three passionate
years of that scientific work, Scheffel performed the pictorial
restorations of a “Rafael”, a “Velasquez”, a “Tiziano” and a “Tintoretto”,
in addition to a primitive piece from the Academy Museum and four
minor canvases belonging to the Queen Elena of Rumania.
The Novo Hamburgo
city hall and Scheffel sign a contract aiming at the creation of
an art museum exclusively for public exhibition, preservation and
promotion of the Rio Grande do Sul artist’s art work .
The
E. F. Scheffel Foundation is available for cultural activities,
such as chamber music, conferences and book launch sessions.
The
institution stands for the cultural heritage preservation and historical
research in Rio Grande do Sul.
The Art Gallery
of The Ernesto Frederico Scheffel Foundation
The
works displayed in the magnificent three-story
neoclassic manor house are organized chronologically and thematically
grouped as well as based on the techniques used in their creation.
On
the first floor, the works that marked his initial stage, from his
youth until he was 22. Some of them
have a regional accent, precisely because they portray the places
and the region that first witnessed the emergence of this career.
On the second floor, we can find the works that were displayed in
the many Hall of Fine Arts exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro, in the
quest for the “Foreign Trip Prize”. They are of the epic, symbolist
and poetical-realism genres. Finally, on the third floor, the works
of his European period.
SCHEFFEL AND HIS
MUSIC
For
about ten years, from December 1959, secluded in his first studio
in Florence, Scheffel keeps up an intense composing activity, seeing
himself as a self-taught man. For three years he studies Chamber
Music and Orchestration with conductor Armando Fanelli of Cherubin
Conservatory. In 1970, for three more years, Scheffel perfects his
counterpoint and orchestration skills with composer A. Benvenutti,
professor of the Cherubin Conservatory. As a result of this ebullient
period, in 1974 his “Toccata and Fugue” was once again performed
by the Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra (OSPA), led by conductor
Silva Pereira, for the one hundred-fiftieth
anniversary celebrations of the German Immigration and Colonization
in Rio Grande do Sul.
Between
1983-1984, Aplub Association offered Scheffel a space to be used
either as an atelier or concert hall, where he could perform chamber
music concerts, conferences and sound recording. In the same period,
APLUB made possible the pioneer recording of an album dedicated
to the classical music of Rio Grande do Sul, which contains ten
original pieces by Scheffel and performed by the OSPA Chamber Orchestra,
conducted by Arlindo Teixeira.
Important
Dates
Three
personalities with international renown in the artistic world wanted
to make an open avowal, as they know Scheffel and his work, individually,
in the fields of Painting, Sculpture and Music.
1987-
Painter
PIETRO ANNIGONI – Florence, June, 1987
“Frederico
Scheffel is a very gifted painter with a genius for drawing. In
today’s world of art he is a loner who does not hesitate and his
belief is inexorably strengthened with each work; a loner who, amid
so much mediocrity, shines of his own light, that is, a light that
springs from his solid faith and honesty”.
Sculptor
Antonio Berti- Sesto Fiorentino, November 1987.
Professor
of the Fine Arts Academy
“E.
F. Scheffel possesses a truly remarkable curriculum. In addition
to being a painter and sculptor, he is also a composer of classical
and contemporary music. I taught sculpture at the Florence Fine
Arts Academy, where Scheffel perfected himself in this field and
I was very pleased to see that he had a natural way of doing that
perfectly matched my teaching methods. The “Horse”, which he completed
during the period 1959-1960, is a very beautiful sculpture and,
due to its strength, worth the title “masterpiece”. The personality
of the artist Scheffel is very telling of his own world and totally
adherent to a translucent and luminous reality, sometimes, inspired
by expressing transcendental truths that carry mystery.”
Composer Arrigo
Benvenuti, Florence, June 1987
Professor
of the Cherubin Conservatory
“It
was through a chance event that I first came to meet Scheffel, which
made me feel deeply fortunate because
we developed a close rapport and sincere friendship between two
artists, rather than a regular master-student relationship. It is
amazing that he came to me for three years, during which he captured
the instruments and the artful tricks of the musician métier, and,
yet, was able to keep his artist’s personality unscathed, distinctively
as painter and musician. After that period (1970-1973) I considered
that my friend Scheffel was mature to write music without my intervention.
There was no estrangement, though, as one would expect, much the
same way many people do after receiving their degree at the end
of the course. On the contrary, our friendship was much stronger,
which Scheffel had already conquered by his artistic merits, intelligence,
esteem and sympathy. In short, I was most happy to have met this
sensitive artist, with a lively temper, so rich in ideas and ideals
that after the first composition lessons I felt very pleased not
to consider him as a “pupil” but rather as a sort of independent
disciple”.
1989
Having
acquired an old ruin in the Tuscany National Park Delle Apuane,
Italy, in September 30, 1989 – after 8 years of a demanding restoration
work – Scheffel moves on from Florence to the “Valle Del
Serchio”,
in the Lucca Province, in Sept. 1996.
2000
Meeting
with E. F. Scheffel in Valle Del Serchio – Lucca Province, Italy,
(November 5 – 9)
Introduced
by Pietro Annigoni – one of the greatest artists of the 20th
century – and Armindo Trevisan – History of Art Professor at the
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul- Scheffel agrees to an exhibition
in Barga – Media Valle Del Serchio -, displaying 64 works, among
oil and mixed-technique, all accomplished between Florence and his
new home in Piastroni – a stone house, restored since 1990.
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