André Thomkins

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

André Thomkins (born August 11, 1930 in Lucerne ; † November 8, 1985 in West Berlin ) was a Swiss painter , draftsman and poet . He lived in Germany from 1952 and taught from 1971 to 1973 as a professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy .

life and work

André Thomkins was born in 1930 in Lucerne, the second child of Frieda Thomkins, née Hersperger, and the architect John Thomkins. During his school days, which were interrupted by numerous illnesses caused by a congenital heart defect, he began to draw and was interested in geometric constructions.

From 1947 to 1949 André Thomkins attended the arts and crafts school in Lucerne , and in 1950 moved to Paris to the Académie de la Grande Chaumière . It was there that Thomkins met the sculptor and painter Eva Schnell. In 1952 the two married in Rheydt, where Schnell worked as a drawing teacher. Eva Thomkins was also a visual artist as well as an art teacher and teacher. In the same year the first son, Oliver, was born.

André Thomkins dealt with Surrealism , met Paul Gredinger and the sculptor, painter and draftsman Peter Storrer and invented his so-called "Schwebsel" figure. During this time Thomkins also got to know the artists Dieter Roth and Daniel Spoerri , with whom he worked and exhibited.

In 1953 André Thomkins created his first lithographs in self-printing. His second son, Nicolas , who now works as a designer, was born in Ascona . In 1954 the company moved to Essen, where the third son Anselm was born in 1955. This is where André Thomkins made his first newspaper overwriting (puzzling clichés) . While painting, he let himself be seduced by the surface tension of lacquers. That was the discovery of the lacquer skin technique and the first small "lacquer skins" were created.

“A drop or a viscous thread of paint falls onto the water, spreads over it and occupies the surface. The drawing that emerges can be continually changed, with means whose effect triggers an interplay between artificial and natural forces: if you blow on the lacquer, it drifts apart in the desired direction, dissolves in gray shades of photographic fineness and suggests Plasticity. With drops and threads of varnish that are thrown or guided onto the resulting image, you change the landscape [...]. "

- André Thomkins

In 1956 he created miniature sculptures from plasticine and fretsaw blades. In 1957 the first palindromes , plasticine stamp works and the "button egg" (the egg with the one button sewn on) were created. The fourth child, his first daughter Jenison, was born. André Thomkins studied the writings and parapsychology of Justinus Kerner .

“In 1960 I met him for the first time in the programmatic anthology" movens ", which was so characteristic of the avant-garde of the 1960s. He was represented there with the draft of a "permanent scene", the idea of ​​a theater in which the dramatic curve of the game is cut, in which the elements of the game do not mimic anything and the expectations of the audience are contrasted with an absolute banality. "

- Reinhard Döhl : STRATEGY GET ARTS! A memory of André Thomkins

1961 made Thomkins his first roll attitude works and the stage set for The caretaker of Harold Pinter , at the Theater am Dom in Cologne. The second daughter Natalie was born. The German director Carlheinz Caspari and the actor and filmmaker Alfred Feussner founded the Labyr in Cologne , a previously undescribed aesthetic-ethical figure of thought and cultural technique that surpasses all previous artistic models in terms of radicalism. Thomkins joined in with a lot of maze activity until 1964/1965. The project was of central importance to him.

In 1962 Thomkins began with the Lackskin series The Astronauts and designed the set for Edward Albee's The American Dream for the Theater am Dom in Cologne .

In 1963, the large lacquer skins for the Jakobuskirche by Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz made of tubular steel and plastic in Düsseldorf-Eller were completed . In 1964 Thomkins created the “Shadowbuttoneggs” (button egg shadows), in 1965 studied old master painting techniques and worked on miniature-like sculptures made of clay, the so-called “ceramic towers”.

In 1966 the renovated Reformed Church in Sursee was inaugurated with ten glass windows by André Thomkis. In 1967 he created two large glass windows for the school in Cologne-Mülheim, as part of the renovations by the architect Erich Schneider-Wessling , which is now the André Thomkins School .

Together with Dieter Roth and Daniel Spoerri, Thomkins created the so-called Eat Art , works of art and actions that are related to the topic of food. In 1968 the “Restaurant of the Seven Senses” was opened by Daniel Spoerri. The palindrome signs by André Thomkins, which are now in the Il Giardino sculpture garden near Seggiano , hung on the outer facade . Over the years Thomkins had created over a hundred palindromes, with words or phrases that could be read forwards and backwards, in the form of blue street signs with white letters:

"STRATEGY: GET ARTS"

"Oh cet écho!"

"Never rhyme, academy can go in there"

In 1969 various rubber objects were created, such as the Rocker series . His youngest son Anselm died as a result of a traffic accident, followed by his first son Oliver in 1970, who died as a result of a motorcycle accident.

In 1970 the first paraphrases were created based on the works of Jacques Callot , Johann Heinrich Füssli , Arnold Böcklin and in 1971 the first prints on his own etching press . From 1971 to 1973 André Thomkins taught painting and graphics at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . He left this to be able to devote himself to his own work again. In 1972 he designed the set for Tristan Tzaras Gasherz and illustrations for the program booklet of the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus . From 1971 to 1975 Thomkins traveled extensively. In the following years he repeatedly suffered heart attacks and in 1975 turned down the offer of a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich .

In 1976 he pursued a printing activity in the etching workshop of Peter Kneubühler in Zurich, a project of the print graphics directory with the gallery owner Pablo Stähli and joint pantograph drawings with Robert Filliou . In 1978 André Thomkins moved from Essen to Zurich and rented a studio in the “ Rote Fabrik ” cultural center . In 1979 he took part in concerts such as Performance 79 in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich and Selten Hörte Musik for tactile instruments in Hamburg. In 1981 he made the tape recordings for his record "bösendorfer" with Dieter Roth in Reykjavík . In Flüeli-Ranft he built a 25-meter-long xylophone in the open countryside, which can be heard by throwing small wooden cubes. After a long break, André Thomkins made paint skins again. In 1982 he received a DAAD scholarship in Berlin and gave up his studio in the Rote Fabrik.

In 1983 Thomkins revived his old “labyrinth” idea and started working on the mural Labyrinth in the Lucerne National Bank branch . He suffered a heart attack in October and moved in with his girlfriend Elle Förster in Munich in November. In 1984 he accepted a teaching position for painting and graphics along with a studio at the Munich Art Academy.

André Thomkins died of heart failure in Berlin on November 9th. André and Eva Thomkins are buried in the Siepenfriedhof in Essen. There is a palindrome of the artist on the tombstone.

Thomkins painted and drew ironic-fantastic-representational pictures with onomatopoeic titles. His work was influenced by Surrealism and Dadaism . Despite his diverse artistic activities, Thomkins was primarily valued and perceived as a draftsman, while his experimental practice was in the background. Experiments with a wide variety of materials resulted in his humorous and fantastic works of intellectual depth and playful-associative quality - thematically intricate and surprising. Everyday materials such as rubber, magazine photos and paper, food and found objects shaped his work as well as traditional artistic means and techniques. Only recently did a two-time documenta participant (5/1972 and 6/1977) rediscover the two documenta participants in the context of new artistic strategies and in particular through his group of works, the “Lackskins” .

André Thomkins' estate is looked after by the Liechtenstein Art Museum , Vaduz. The Hauser & Wirth gallery sells works by the artist.

Exhibitions

literature

  • Helga Weckop-Conrads, Ulrike Behrends: Düsseldorf avant-garde, personalities, movements, places. Richter Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1995, ISBN 3928762451
  • Wilfried Dörstel: A labyr is not a labyr, Walther König, 2009, ISBN 3865606369

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eva Thomkins at Sikart
  2. ↑ Museum page on the exhibition , accessed on May 4, 2014.
  3. ↑ Announcement on the exhibition ( Memento of the original from August 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed August 22, 2014.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.museum-joanneum.at
personal data
SURNAME Thomkins, André
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thomkins, Andreì
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter, draftsman and poet
DATE OF BIRTH August 11, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Lucerne
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1985
Place of death West Berlin