Adam C. Oellers

Adam C. Oellers (* 1949 in Linz am Rhein ) is a German art historian and was deputy museum director of the municipal museums in Aachen until July 2014 .

Live and act

The son of the sculptor Günther Oellers and the painter Edith Oellers-Teuber and brother of the painter Edith Oellers spent his youth in Duisburg , his mother's hometown, and in Linz on the Rhine. He grew up in a family home in which the visual arts played a formative role and there were close friendships and contacts with, among others, important artists, writers, philosophers and responsible museum employees.

This probably resulted in Adam Oeller's decision to take up the courses in art history, mathematics, philosophy and folklore at the universities of Bonn and Vienna. In 1978 he did his doctorate at the University of Bonn with his dissertation Iconographic Investigations on Portrait Painting of the New Objectivity and was then taken on as a research assistant at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum and the 1976 newly founded Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

As early as 1979 Oellers moved to Aachen , where he was given the office of curator at the museums of the city of Aachen and, among other things, the management of the city history museum Burg Frankenberg . Later he was here, among other activities, several times, including from 1989/1990 and 2003/2004, the overall management of the Aachen museums and was promoted in 1998 to senior custodian and deputy director. In addition, from 1992 to 2004, Oellers was given a teaching position for urban history at the Faculty of Architecture at RWTH Aachen University .

In the course of his official work, Oellers wrote numerous technical articles, artist descriptions and exhibition reviews and received invitations to lectures from several cities in North Rhine-Westphalia. In addition, he occasionally dealt with film editing and is still artistically active with his own photo editing. In addition, Oellers is a board member of the Museumsverein Aachen e. V. and in the association Mies van der Rohe Haus Aachen e. V.

Works (selection)

• Caricature and social criticism by George Grosz , in: Cat. Kleine und Grosze Welten , University of Bonn, 1972
• Landscape between nature and ideology , in: Cat. Landscape - Antipole or Fluchtraum? , Leverkusen - Berlin 1974/75
• Comments on the iconography of the portrait of the 1920s - portrait and portrait theory of the 1920s in contemporary sources and artist citations , in: Cat. The 1920s in portraiture , Bonn 1976
• On the question of the continuity of New Objectivity and National Socialist Art , in: Kritischeberichte , 6th year, volume 6, 1978
• Cat. Jugglers, honest men and cocottes - types from the milieu of the "Golden Twenties" , Museum Ludwig, Graph. Cabinet, Cologne 1979
• Handbook Museum Ludwig - Art of the 20th Century , Cologne 1979
• Cat. Church Art in the Diocese of Aachen 1930 - 1980 , Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen 1980 (supplemented in: Philipp Boonen , Lebensraum Bistum Aachen, Aachen 1982, p. 253 ff., Also in: Aachener Kunstblätter , Vol. 49, 1980 / 81, pp. 255ff.)
• Tradition and ideology in the industrial representation of National Socialism , in: Cat. Art and Technology in the 20s , Munich 1980
• The Cistercian in Aachen , in: Aachener Kunstblätter , 49, 1980/81, p. 241 ff.
• Gerhard Marcks - a sculptor between Bauhaus avant-garde and conservative art , in: Kritischeberichte , 10th year, no . 1, 1982, p. 22ff.
• Antonio Máro , Paintings - Sculptures - Drawings , St. Gallen 1983 (with Ernst Günther Grimme )
• Georg Meistermann - Stations in an Artistic Development , in: Cat. Georg Meistermann - Paintings 1958–1984 , Aachen - Koblenz 1984
• Kat. Kreuz -zeichen - Religious foundations in the work of Joseph Beuys , Aachen - Ratingen Museumsverein Aachen, 1985/86
• Cat. 150 Years of the Iron Rhine - The first international railway line Cologne-Aachen-Antwerp , Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen 1985
• Above all sacred art - On the situation of the Werkkunstschule Aachen , in: Cat. From the rubble - Art and culture in the Rhineland and Westphalia 1945–1952. New beginning and continuity , Bonn 1985
• Artist, friend and contemporary, on portraits by Georg Schrimpf and his circle in the 1920s , in: Aachener Kunstblätter , Vol. 54/55, 1986/87
• For Sacco and Vanzetti - visual artists document a case of class justice from 1927 , in: tendenzen , vol. 28, no. 160, October 1987, p. 41ff.
• Medieval sculptures from the Rhine-Maas area , in: Weltkunst , Vol. 57, No. 4, February 15, 1987, p. 370 ff.
• Alfred Rethel - The Charles frescos in the Aachen town hall and the oil studies in the Museum Burg Frankenberg , Aachen 1987
• Barthel Gilles - Life and Work , (with Michael Euler-Schmidt), Bongers, Recklinghausen 1987, ISBN 3-7647-0387-3
• Cat. Structure and Gesture - Informal Painting and Subjective Photography in German Art of the 1950s , Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen 1988
• Joseph Jaekel - sculptures, drawings , Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen 1988
• The type of the "Apostle beam" and its distribution in the Rhineland-Maasland wood carving of the 15th and 16th centuries , in: Aachener Kunstblätter , Vol. 54/55, 1986/87, pp. 275ff.
• Hubert Werden - stations of his artistic work , in: Maria Diederichs (Ed.), Hubert Werden (Ill.): The painterly and plastic work 1952–1992 , Aachen 1992, p. 8ff.
• Cat. German informal painting, works from the Lückeroth collection , Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum Aachen 1992, ISBN 3-929203-01-4
• Cat. The architects Johann Joseph Couven and Jakob Couven and their work in Burtscheid , Stadtsparkasse Aachen, Aachen 1993
• Uebergaenge - Contributions to art and architecture in the Rhineland , publishing house for database and humanities, Alfter 1993, ISBN 3-929742-12-8
• with Sibille Spiegel: Do you want total life? Fluxus and agit-pop of the 1960s in Aachen , Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen 1995, ISBN 3-929261-24-3
• Rudolf Steiner's panel drawings in the context of art history , in: Colored thoughts in black. Rudolf Steiner panel drawings. Catalog for the exhibition from June 2 to July 9, 1995 in the Städtisches Kaufhaus, Leipzig , Leipzig 1995
• Raoul Ubac 1910-1985. Sculptures, paintings, drawings, photographs , Grenzecho-Verlag, Eupen 1996, ISBN 90-5433-085-6
• Alfred Rethel 1816 - 1859 , in: Bert Kasties, Manfred Sicking (Hrsg.): Aacheners making history , Vol. 1, Aachen 1997
• Rudolf Schwarz - Albert Renger-Patzsch . The Architect, the Photographer and the Aachen Buildings , Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen 1997, ISBN 978-3929203172
• Cat. Ludwig Schaffrath - Public works in the Aachen region , Sparkasse Aachen, Aachen 1999
• Rudolf Schwarz , in: Bert Kasties, Manfred Sicking (Hrsg.): Aacheners making history , Volume 2, Aachen 1999
• Helmuth Schepp - a "classical sculptor" , in: Margarethe Schepp. The sculptor Helmuth Schepp , Heidenheim 2002, p. 9ff.
• Yours Sons of the Land of Morea - Folk songs, ballads and poems from the Peloponnese , Aachen 2003
• Ex Oriente. Isaac and the white elephant. Baghdad - Jerusalem - Aachen. A journey through three cultures around 800 and today , 3 volumes (co-ed. Catalog articles), Aachen 2003
• Ex Oriente - Isaak and the white elephant , guide through the exhibition (catalog articles), Verlag Mainz, Aachen 2003
• The femme fatale at the pace of the big city. The master designer Jupp Wiertz 1888 - 1939 , (with Roland Rappmann), Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum Aachen 2003, p. 9ff. ISBN 3-929203-49-9
• Karl Otto Götz - A Review - Current Work , Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum - Ludwig Forum, Aachen 2004, ISBN 3-929292-34-3
• Love of life and fear of death. Graphic masterpieces by the artist group Die Brücke and their contemporaries from the Neußer collection , Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen 2005, ISBN 3-929203-55-3
• Maja's modern sisters - About Christiane Maether's handling of goddesses, angels and strong women , in: Cat. Curriculum Arte - Christiane Maether and her students , Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum Aachen - Städt. Galerie Speyer, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen 2006, ISBN 3-929203-61-8
• "Christ in the Ruhr Area" - The socially critical updating of Christian visual themes in art after the First World War , in: Cat. War and Utopia - Art, Literature and Politics in the Rhineland after the First World War , Düsseldorf 2006, p. 248ff.
• Catalog of paintings of the 19th and 20th centuries , in: Schattengalerie - The lost works of the painting collection , Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum Aachen, inventory catalog of the Gemäldegalerie, Munich 2008, pp. 263–369.
• The "journeyman of the world builder". Hans Schwippert and his work in Aachen. In the field of tension between Bauhaus influences and tradition. Schwippert's house buildings from the 1930s , in: Gerda Breuer , Pia Mingels, Christopher Oestereich: Hans Schwippert 1899–1973. Moderation of the reconstruction , Berlin 2010.
• Peter Lacroix - an artist in Aachen , in: Andreas Petzold , Ludwig Forum for International Art Aachen (ed.): Pur - Peter Lacroix (1924–2010) , catalog for the exhibition at the Ludwig Forum Aachen 2015, pp. 11–12, Ludwig Forum, Aachen 2015, ISBN 978-3-929292-55-8 .
• Karl Otto Götz - an Öcher turned 100. Aachen honors its great painter on his 100th birthday , Alsdorf 2015
• Markus Lüpertz - The glass painting work , in: Kat. Markus Lüpertz. Painting with light , Linnich 2016
• Headstand, crosses and riots - uprising in Aachen. Joseph Beuys and the international Fluxus artists open up in the cultural province , in: Aachener Reisen , series 9 of the AKV-Sammlung Crous, Aachen 2016
• The glass windows of the Goetheanum in Dornach near Basel - organic room design between innovative glass cutting technology and conditioned art , in: Masterpieces of 20th Century Glass Painting in the Rhineland , Volume III, ed. by Iris Nestler, Mönchengladbach 2019, pp. 28–36.

Web links

• Literature by and about Adam C. Oellers in the catalog of the German National Library