Alfred onion

Alfred Zwiebel (born November 6, 1914 in Fürth ; † February 25, 2005 in New York ) was a German-American painter , mainly of landscapes, flower pictures and still lifes.

Life

Alfred Zwiebel was born in Fürth , when he was five the family moved to Bamberg , where he then spent his childhood and youth. The beauty of this city and its surroundings in Franconian Switzerland gave him lasting artistic inspiration. Until the end of his life, depictions of the city of Bamberg and the Franconian landscape were among his preferred motifs.

Onion immigrated to the United States in 1935 . First he lived in Milwaukee , then in New York City , which became his second hometown. He became an American citizen in 1944. In the following years he worked in many different professions until he was finally able to devote himself entirely to painting in the sixties.

His paintings were soon shown in galleries and museums in many US states - New York, New Jersey , Pennsylvania , Virginia , Ohio , and California - and in Canada , England , Austria , and Germany . When an art gallery was opened in the castle on the flower island of Mainau on Lake Constance , Zwiebel was invited to host the opening exhibition.

The city of Bamberg invited Zwiebel to hold an exhibition on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of its existence (1973), to take part in an exhibition to celebrate the 975th anniversary of the consecration of Bamberg Cathedral (1987) and a large exhibition of his works in the Historical Museum to give (1993).

painting

Onion worked in oil, pastel, and oil pastel. He was particularly known for his bright colors - an art critic in Starnberg described his works as “optimism expressed in colors”. In his flower pictures he mostly did not paint flowers as such, but transformed them into fantasies of light and color. He loved the works of many different artists from different eras and art movements, but was most drawn to the French Impressionists , by whom he was also most influenced. Although onion did not belong to any particular “school”, he said that if at all he would call himself a “modern impressionist”. In 1968 the Munich evening newspaper wrote : "Onion could be called a belated pissarro , but with the condition that he is a pissarro for today's eyes."