A small clue leads to large travels

Fritz's war stories were few and his sketches and paintings somehow filter out the horrors of the frozen battles at the Russian front. Amazingly, there are quite a number of originals that survive today and continue to tell stories of the past. The winter landscapes are reminders of the striking similarities of the beauty of harsh winters in Belarus and Saskatchewan (see blog entry of Feb 2012), but the portraits tell a more human story. And so it was that a tiny signature on a portrait of a fellow soldier lead to some surprising facts about the end-of-war whereabouts of Fritz as a Russion prisoner of war (POW).

Detail of signature enlarged, showing a date of March 28, 1945

Deciphered and unabbreviated: 'Gezeichnet von Fritz Stehwien, am 28. März 1945, im Gefangenen Lager Thorn'
Translated: Sketched by Fritz Stehwien, on March 28, 1945, in the POW camp at Thorn.



This turned out to be the only real clue as to exactly where this POW camp actually was. With the help of the Internet, it didn't take too long to find out that the Thorn POW camp was in today's Torun, in Poland. Not in Russia at all, as was presumed, from the few and fragmented stories that Fritz did tell.

This new clue had to be worth a journey to Europe! Retracing some of the paths that Fritz took with his 'Rolle', that forever roll of canvas he carried, has become part of the passion of the large documentation anyway, so why not head out right this summer.

99th Birthday

Large Self Portrait, late 1940s

If Fritz were alive today, he likely would still be passionately painting, sketching and finding that perfect motif. And with that critical look, constantly striving to improve on his work.

Summertime and the Outdoor Studio

Fritz using his VW as an easel

Sketching downtown Calgary with grandson looking on

Teaching art classes out on the deck

After long winters, when there were limitations on the outdoor motifs, the summertime was a most welcome season. It provided more color, easier travel, and much less worry about frozen hands and frozen paints.

Not only did Fritz chase a good view and set up in some unusual places, he encouraged his students to do the same.

 


He explained about color and clouds and perspective, but the thing that probably was hardest to teach, was how to get the 'feel' of the landscape into the painting. It is this 'feel' or 'mood' that made his paintings so popular. He somehow managed to capture more than just the view.

The Heartache of Flood Damage

Remaining half of a watercolor of a German town

It doesn't take long, when sorting and documenting the massive collection of sketches and paintings, for the damage of a flooded basement to become evident.

Many canvasses and sadly, many watercolors and other sketches are damaged, if not totally destroyed. It's hard to say whether it was due to Saskatoon's heavy rain flooding of 1982, where the water rose to one meter high downstairs, or other, lesser basement flooding in the small old house. The heartache of such a discovery is the same, regardless of the cause.

Thanks to photo editing software, however, many of these works can still be included in the inventory, and potentially in some of the planned book publishing. Restoration in print will likely be more successful than tackling it on the originals. Or is it best to just throw it all out.

Historic view of the Saskatoon City Hospital with water damage

Water damage on a watercolor sketch of a lake in summer