Egon Karl Nicolaus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Egon Karl Nicolaus (born March 30, 1928 in Hamburg , † September 23, 1988 in Cologne ) was a German painter.

Life

Nicolaus was born in 1928 as the second child of the postal worker Arthur Nicolaus and his wife Elisabeth. In 1946 he began an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in the Alsterhaus , Hamburg, and then attended Max Hermann Mahlmann's painting academy . In 1949 he became a student of Arnold Fiedler at the Landeskunsthochschule in Hanover, in 1950/51 he was a student of Willi Baumeister . With his friend Arthur (Addi) Köpcke he traveled several times to Italy in 1952/53. In 1954 he exhibited for the first time, in the same year he married Karin Reimer, from whom he divorced in 1961. After a stay in Worpswede , where he was co-founder of the “Young Group Worpswede”, he lived in Paris from 1957. In 1965 he married Marianne Schiepel, with whom he moved to Cologne in the same year. He kept his studio in Paris. 1971/72 he had a longer stay in New York in the artist hotel Chelsea . After a long trip through the USA, Nicolaus moved into a new studio in Cologne in 1976 and another in Paris in 1977.

Artistic work

Nicolaus' early constructivist work in the 1950s was influenced by his teacher Willi Baumeister. At this time, the predominant vertical is a symbol of gravity in the goal of ultimate simplicity. From the confrontation with Informel and Tachism that Nicolaus encountered in Paris, the numbers appeared in his pictures in the mid-1960s. For him they were an expression of the “harsh reality” that had to be “made visible”.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1954 Hamburg, Volksheim
  • 1955 Hamburg, Institut Français; Copenhagen, Gallery Center
  • 1957 Galerie am Dom, Frankfurt; Paris Gallery Duncan
  • 1958 Hamburger Kunsthalle ; Copenhagen, Köpcke Gallery
  • 1963 Witten, Märkisches Museum + Münster gallery Klasing
  • 1970 Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum , Hagen
  • 1973 Märkisches Museum , Witten
  • 1977 Gronau, Galerie van Almsick
  • 1979 Zurich, P. Facchetti Gallery
  • 1980 Geneva, Gallery Service
  • 1984 Paris, Marisal Gallery; Paris Goethe Institute
  • 1989 Vienna, Gallery Grill
  • 1997 Cologne City Museum , Cologne
  • 1998 Cologne, Galerie Dreiseitel
  • 2010 Cologne, Seippel Gallery
  • 2013 Art Museum Gelsenkirchen
  • 2017 Düren, Leopold-Hoesch-Museum

literature

  • Michael Euler-Schmidt, Horst Richter (ed.): Egon Karl Nicolaus number pictures. Wienand, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-87909-621-X .
  • Karin von Maur (Ed.): Magic of the number in the art of the 20th century. Exhib. Catalog State Gallery Stuttgart. Hatje, Ostfildern-Ruit 1997, ISBN 3-7757-0666-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Euler-Schmidt, Horst Richter (ed.): Egon Karl Nicolaus number pictures. Cologne 1999, p. 12.
  2. ↑ 2013 exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen at stadt.gelsenkirchen.de, accessed on March 9, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Nicolaus, Egon Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1988
Place of death Cologne