Ernst Volland

Ernst Volland (* 1946 in Bürgstadt ) is a German artist, photographer, caricaturist, gallery owner, curator and author.

Live and act

The son of a grammar school teacher for Latin and Greek grew up in Wilhelmshaven , where he attended the Humboldt School until he graduated from high school. While still studying fine arts , from 1967 in Hamburg and until 1972 in Berlin, Volland published his first books with his own drawings and montages, as well as numerous children's books with his own texts and illustrations.

Volland showed his first solo exhibition in 1968 in the Berlin gallery in the evening and has since made a name for himself in the alternative scene in Berlin as a graphic designer of satirical and subversive posters and photomontages , which are in the tradition of John Heartfield . His work has been published in magazines such as the satirical magazine Pardon . Volland has been sued several times for his social satirical publications (seizures, investigations, lawsuits). He had the sharpest argument with the Mast-Jägermeister company over its satirical version of magazine advertising ( I drink Jägermeister because ... ), in which Volland connects the product with drug abuse by children ( I drink Jägermeister because my dealer is currently sitting in jail ), depicting a five-year-old girl who supposedly drinks Jägermeister with pleasure .

From the mid-1970s he was given teaching positions at universities for caricature, photography and photo montage.

Since then, his satirical works have been shown in over 100 exhibitions across Europe. In 1982, the New Society for Fine Art in Public Space organized the exhibition “Full on the Eye” with Volland's satirical posters on Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, which the police destroyed after a few days on the grounds that one of the pictures had a swastika on it . Volland restored the exhibition several times and all allegations were withdrawn.

Volland invented the young French artist Blaise Vincent in 1983 as a critical action against the art business . Volland painted large-format pictures overnight for a solo exhibition entitled Fresh Painting and presented them to the public. When the fake was discovered , he duped critics and the Nationalgalerie Berlin , which had accepted one of the pictures as a donation.

Between 1984 and 1985 Ernst Volland published the comic magazine "Comix + Cartoon Reihe". In the 1990s, Volland worked on film fakes with private television stations. In 1987 he founded the picture agency “Voller Ernst” together with Heinz Krimmer . The agency has one of the largest collections of comic photography in the world. In 1991 he met the Russian photographer and photo editor Yevgeny Chaldej in Moscow and published his work in numerous exhibitions and books.

Since the 1990s, Volland has devoted himself more to the artistic examination of historical photos and photographic icons of contemporary history. These works were shown in an exhibition in the German Historical Museum in Berlin. Volland alienated well-known photos that have impressed themselves on the collective memory of the Federal Republic by blurring them and turned them into visual riddles for the viewer. The series created over the years is called "Branded Pictures".

Since 2005 Volland has been devoting himself to another series of pictures called "Colored Pencil Pictures". He uses colored pencils to color well-known, large-format black and white history photos, such as an aerial photo of the destroyed Hiroshima and other shocking image content.

Since 2006 he has been writing the Vollands blog at taz.de on a regular basis , with stories about current events.

In 2013, he published the book `` Enjoyment without giving up '' , in which he gives advice and life advice for what he believes to be a responsible life of pleasure . In 2016 Stories , short stories from his life, was published by edition Friedenauer Brücke.

He has lived in Berlin since 1968.

Exhibitions

• 2009: Heinrich Böll Foundation
• 2012: Staeck / Volland: works from four decades. Willy-Brandt-Haus Berlin, October 2 to November 11, 2012.
• 2013: Villa Ichon : Ernst Volland - posters from the 70s and 80s

Publications

• Posters-cartoons. Atelier in the farmhouse, Fischerhude 1977, ISBN 3-88132307-4 .
• with Stefan Aust : Nice views. The Ernst Volland book. Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-89136-123-8 .
• Felix all alone in the world. Ravensburger, 1989.
• with Peter Huth (Ed.): This book is pure forgery. From A to Z: Everything is fake. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt 1989.
• with Evgenij A. Chaldej (Ed.): From Moscow to Berlin - pictures by the Russian photographer Evgeni Chaldej. Nicolai, Berlin 1994.
• God and other gods. Looking for God with a fake. Verlag M, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-9812257-1-6 .
• The banner of victory. Story, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-929829-91-4 .
• Heinrich Böll Foundation (Ed.): Burned-in pictures. Catalog. 2009, ISBN 978-3-86928-004-2 .
• Epilogue in: Manfred Günther Dictionary Youth - Age: from Abba to Zygote. With caricatures by Klaus Stuttmann , a foreword by Austrofred and an afterword by Ernst Volland, RabenStück-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-935607-39-1 .
• Do without with pleasure. Book, Verlag Büchse Der Pandora 2013, ISBN 978-3-88178-366-8 .
• with David King : John Heartfield: Laughter is a Devastating Weapon. Tate Publishing 2015, ISBN 978-1849761840
• Stories. Edited by Evelyn Weissberg and Hermann Ebling. edition Friedenauer Brücke 2016, ISBN 978-3981613056

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Volland in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ernst Volland's website
• Website of the picture agency Voller Ernst

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Vollandsblog: 30 Years of Jägermeister , accessed on December 28, 2014
2. ↑ This action was documented in the catalog Police destroy art - A sociological experiment , NGBK 1983
3. ^ Heinrich Böll Foundation: Traces of Our Time - For the opening of the exhibition "Burned-in Pictures", works by Ernst Volland , accessed on April 9, 2016
4. ^ Special exhibition "Volland Macht Kunst" , accessed on April 9, 2016
5. ↑ Volland's blog , accessed December 28, 2014
6. ^ Marianne Zepp: About the exhibition "Burned-in Pictures" by Ernst Volland , Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2009
7. ^ Villa Ichon: Exhibition Ernst Volland - Posters from the 70s and 80s , accessed on December 28, 2014