Florian Koehler

Florian Köhler (born January 28, 1935 in Frankfurt am Main ; † August 7, 2013 in Hamburg ) was a German painter , draftsman and graphic artist . In Munich he co-founded the artist groups WIR (1959–1965), SPUR-WIR (1965–1966) and GEFLECHT (1966–1968) and is one of the outstanding representatives of the neo-figurative language of German post-war art between abstraction and figuration.

Family and youth

Florian Köhler was the son of Georg Johann Köhler (1890–1944), commercial artist and freelance artist who had studied at the Munich Art Academy with Professor Carl Johann Becker-Gundahl before participating in World War I. Georg Johann Köhler was taken prisoner by France at an early age, with long stays in southwestern France ( Le Château-d'Oléron ), North African, Portuguese and Spanish camps. In a Moroccan quarry he had to perform heavy, unhealthy forced labor at times. A bundle of drawings from this period has been preserved. Georg Johann Köhler did not return to Germany until well after the end of the war (1922) and, first in Darmstadt , then in Frankfurt am Main, he received graphic assignments, primarily from automobile companies ( Adlerwerke , Opel ) to illustrate advertising brochures, advertisements and posters. Florian Köhler's mother, Ruth Gennes from Darmstadt (1904–1991; nee Blecher, first married to Georg Johann Köhler) married Walter Gennes, Marine Lieutenant d. R. in World War II. Florian Köhler received painting lessons from the art teacher Mrs. von Jöden before starting school. He attended the Diesterwegschule in Frankfurt am Main, then the elementary school in Motten , in 1945 the elementary school in Burgsinn , where he saw the end of the war with the invasion of American troops. Back in Frankfurt am Main he lived with the family at Klaus-Groth-Str. 2 and attended the humanistic Heinrich-von-Gagern-Gymnasium (formerly Kaiser-Friedrichs-Gymnasium) up to the Abitur in March 1955. In 1959 the parents Gennes moved to Niederhöchstadt , Schöne Aussicht 3, where the son Florian had a room that he was later able to use it as a studio.

education

In 1955 Köhler attended the evening classes of Max Beckmann's student Theo Garve (Offenbach a. M. 1902–1987 Hamburg) at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, completed a traineeship in the Klingspor type foundry , Offenbach am Main, and took part in round tables in renowned Frankfurter Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath . In 1956 he began studying fine arts at the Städelschule, a. a. with the draftsman and painter Heinz Battke (Berlin 1900–1966 Frankfurt a. M.). In 1957 Köhler moved to Munich and continued his studies of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , mainly with Erich Glette (Wiesbaden 1896–1980 Prien am Chiemsee). He rented a studio room on Kobellstrasse. 15. In 1958, Köhler and colleagues spent three months studying on the Italian island of Giglio . Then Köhler and his college friend Heino Naujoks took part in the international summer academy “School of Seeing” organized by Oskar Kokoschka in Salzburg , including a trip to Vienna with Kokoschka and the students . In 1963 Köhler successfully completed his studies.

Creation of artist groups

In 1959, Florian Köhler, Heino Naujoks and Helmut Rieger founded the WIR group while studying with Erich Glette in Munich . A visit to the documenta II in Kassel in 1959 had a fundamental impact on the artistic approach of WIR under the impressions of the pictures by Robert Delaunay , Max Beckmann , Henri Matisse , Pablo Picasso , Willem de Kooning and the special presentation of the work of Jackson Pollock . The painter and author Hans Platschek , who lives in Munich , was also artistically represented in Kassel and also attracted the attention of the group members with his critical book on international Tachism and his demand for new figurations. The sculptor Hans Matthäus Bachmayer joined the WIR group in 1961 and the painter Reinhold Heller in 1962, who himself founded the QUADROCENTO group in 1955 . After first public exhibition participation since 1959, u. a. the Kunstverein Munich , 1961 members of WE (Heller, coalfish, Naujoks and Rieger) were the occasion of the group show of the "Free Munich and German artistic community" in the Haus der Kunst represented with individual works. From 1962 onwards, WE regularly took part in the annual "Autumn Salon". After the members Bachmayer, Köhler, Naujoks and Rieger graduated from the Academy in 1963, WIR intensified exhibition activities and networked in the Munich art scene. Contacts were established with, for example, the gallery owner Otto van de Loo , who has represented contemporary young art since 1957 (including Asger Jorn , KRH Sonderborg , Emil Schumacher , Antonio Saura , Henri Michaux , Roberto Matta , Hans Platschek, Wols ).

In 1965 there were collegial encounters between WIR and members of the SPUR group ( Lothar Fischer , Heimrad Prem , Helmut Sturm , HP Zimmer ), which has existed since 1957 , when they took part in the “Spring Salon” in Augsburg . Soon afterwards, the artists rehearsed collective work in Munich on a jointly decided general topic (car-motor-traffic). A programmatic platform was formulated in writing in May 1965 for the upcoming issue of the SPUR magazine. In August 1965 the members of SPUR and WIR offered a trip to the ethnological museums in Freiburg , Basel and Stuttgart with the carved and painted wooden objects from the South Seas and New Ireland (Papua New Guinea), the so-called Malangganen , as well as the “Signals” show current work by u. a. Ellsworth Kelly , Kenneth Noland and Georg Karl Pfahler in Basel gave the groups illustrative material for an intensive discussion about a new aesthetic. In practice, the so-called anti-objects later emerged from this and, in October 1965, another artistic manifesto. A separate magazine "SPUR WIR No. 1" appeared in December 1965 with the texts from May and October that had already been worked out, as well as a current statement under the motto "Space and mesh".

In the winter of 1965/66, individual group members worked intensively on the realization of anti-objects in changing constellations, using curved and fan-like elements made of cardboard, wood and metal wire. Colored painting of the parts created dynamic-looking braids, which at the same time gave the name of the new group name BRAID . In September 1966, Bachmayer, Heller, Köhler, Naujoks, Rieger, Sturm and Zimmer exhibited their anti-objects in the Van de Loo gallery under this sign, whereupon further presentations by GEFLECHT in Munich (“Herbstsalon”), in the Akademie der Künste (Berlin ) , the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden , the Kunsthalle Nürnberg ("Labyrinthe"), the Kunsthalle Kiel and the Kunstverein Freiburg followed.

In January 1967, GEFLECHT traveled to Paris and visited Jacqueline de Jong , painter and important representative of the situationist international artists' association . In Munich, the group received a productive boost from the provision of a studio cellar in Herzogstrasse by gallery owner Van de Loo. The basement increasingly became a meeting point for the left-wing scene, and artistic work moved to private studios. Ultimately, controversial debates about the social position of the artist between production and action, between the art market and art refusal, led to the crumbling of the group, whose collective and individual works were shown by Van de Loo in Munich in early 1968 and at the Cologne art market in autumn . The GEFLECHT group was dissolved by October 1968 at the latest.

After the end of GEFLECHT in Munich, Köhler was still inspired by the experience of working in artist groups until the end of the 1970s, initially as a member of the short-lived "Group Montag" ( Adam Jankowski , Florian Köhler, Tomislav Laux , Dieter Rühmann ) in Hamburg and then in the “workshop group” (including Jürgen Hockauf , Anne Köhler, Christoph Krämer , Manfred Pixa ); with changing constellations, joint projects such as exhibitions, calendars and art in public spaces were created. realized.

Change of location

After his life in Frankfurt and Munich, Köhler moved to Hamburg in September 1969 together with Anne Rieger, who, as an art educator and painter, was named Anne Köhler after marriage in 1970. In 1974 Florian Köhler was able to rent a small studio at Jarrestraße 80 (today: "Industriehaus Stadtpark") with a view of the courtyard. The artists Klaus Kütemeyer , Edgar Augustin and Ingeborg Princess of Schleswig-Holstein also worked in the same block . In 1986 Köhler moved into a more spacious studio behind Hamburg's main train station at Böckmannstrasse 18 with a warehouse and floor; from 1992 Anne Köhler also had her studio there. In 1990, Anne and Florian Köhler, who are used to travel, made their first visit to the southwestern French Atlantic island of Ile d'Oléron, which has since been followed by longer annual work stays in the local village of La Chefmalière. After the artist couple had to leave the Böckmannstrasse studio in 2012, they rented joint studio rooms for a short time in Meisenstrasse in Hamburg-Barmbek and finally a work archive was set up in Hamburg city center.

plant

The extensive work from around 60 years unfolds in the media of painting, drawing, gouache, pastel, collage, etching and serigraphy. Koehler has rarely designed figurative objects. A look at the entire work reveals significant changes in style and relates to personal changes of location and studio as well as to drastic external events in politics, society and culture. At the same time it can be seen that Köhler often made use of phases of art history, religion and mythology. According to Köhler, he particularly dealt with the work of individual artistic personalities such as Peter Paul Rubens , Eugène Delacroix , Hans von Marées , Henri Matisse , Pablo Picasso and Max Beckmann , other painters of the 19th century and important exponents of Informel , Pop Art and figurative painting of the 20th century. Köhler was also inspired by Japanese woodcuts, comics and non-European artifacts.

The development of the painterly is decisive in his entire oeuvre. The relationship between line and color creates a specific area of tension with changing accents in each work phase. Other constants are topics such as traffic, boats, automobiles and flying machines, such as socially defined groups of people (family, youth gangs, lovers, demonstrators, sports teams, fishermen, workers, fitters, service providers, farmers, walkers, cyclists, refugees, other communities of fate) and motives of the personal living and educational space. Until the 1980s, the individual themes were circled in numerous drawings and paintings, from the sketch to the final version of the painting. Subsequently, without any preparatory work, subjects emerged as single images or as series, explored in the immediate creative process through changing techniques and materials. The titles often noted on the back of Köhler's paintings are not insignificant keys to understanding the representations.

1959-1968

The work can be divided into several different phases in chronological order: The estate includes drawings by children and young people, works from their studies in Frankfurt with academic drawings in front of the model or as perspective exercises, copies of paintings from Delacroix's early years of study in Munich and style adaptations by El Greco to Kokoschka.

With the founding of the WIR group in 1959, Köhler's work was initially shaped by discussions about the reception of religiously based baroque aesthetics and expressive forms of expression for ancient and Christian themes of suffering and coping with it ("The Walk to the Cross", 1962, Coll. Hurrle, Durbach / “Little Prometheus”, 1962, estate), then from the examination of classical modernism and contemporary positions (“Degas Paraphrase”, 1964, private property / “Supermann II”, 1965, estate). The expansion of WIR by SPUR in the mid-1960s led to collective artistic forms of work with a theoretical program on the social position of the artist, published in self-published booklets in which Köhler played a leading role. Against the background of the discussions about the relationship between individuality in expression and group work with overarching style formation, Köhler designed many of his own variations as colored collages and gouaches. In addition to the anti-objects created in the group in the winter of 1965/66, Köhler produced his own versions that reflect the discourse on contemporary perception of dynamically industrialized processes in traffic, communication and society in high-contrast relief images with arrows, spirals, wheels and technical details (“Untitled (Relief) ”, 1965, Coll. Hurrle, Durbach). These aesthetics, built on linear, symbolic and abstracting forms - loops, loops, circles, nets, webs and interweaving - remain a constitutive characteristic of Köhler's further work. During the phase of politicization and growing group tensions in the field between protests against emergency laws and the Vietnam War , Köhler developed a productive range of topics in 1968 with the reintroduction of the figurative in paintings such as "Fast breeder secret", "Frustrated Batman", "Call for help", "Bloody end", "The Big Brother ”,“ Brenn ... ”,“ Tense Situation ”,“ Trapped Palaver! ”, (all works in the estate).

1969-1989

Köhler's time in Hamburg (1969–2013) was initially shaped by the continuation of the design of social issues developed in Munich from the “mesh” method (“Dust in my Eyes”, 1969, “Unacknowledged”, 1969, estate) before The decisive political events of the 1970s were reflected in rapidly successive style changes: First, a series of paintings of the same format (120 × 110 cm) with a set-piece-like pop aesthetic based on the Vietnam War or the military dictatorship in Greece ("Cyrus Smith determines the geographical location 24 ° 5 'Ö. L., 57 ° 51' N. B. "," The night is darkest before daybreak, they say. "," Obristenschaukel ", all 1970, estate), then it became the Munich Olympics 1972 in the competition fever aroused in the Federal Republic of Germany ironically captured in pictures and drawings of affluent citizens on exercise bikes and aggressively acting athletes ("Kuklux Klan u. Heimtrainer", 1972, "Sportler", 1972/7 3, estate, "Heimtrainer / Heimtraining", 1972/73, Coll. Hurrle, Durbach, "Trautes Heim", 1972, private property Hamburg). In a climate of suspicions and police searches at the time of the RAF actions, Köhler described Beckmann's figures - constricted in a steep vertical format and falling perspectives - the burglaries into the privacy of citizens perceived as threatening ("Der Voyeur II", 1972, " In the house next door ”, 1973,“ Untitled (attack) ”, 1973/74, estate).

The move to the Jarrestraße studio initiated the ten-year period (1974 to 1985) in which Köhler dealt intensively with the subject of physical activities in a rapidly changing organizational structure of work between craft and service. The spectrum ranges from dock workers unloading cargo to car mechanics, people on the assembly line and post deliverers; Ultimately, Köhler also shows the family weekend idyll in the allotment garden and business on the farm.

In the mid-1980s, Köhler began to pursue several painting strategies at the same time and to combine them with specific subjects. In terms of content, he captured virulent disputes about transports such as the storage of nuclear waste in northern Germany ( Gorleben ). a. the pictures “Müllkippe”, 1985/86, “Landschaft mit Flugzeug”, 1987, “Zwischenlager”, 1988/89 (estate). At the same time, a complex set of paintings was created, in which mythological, literary and historically relevant events of the 80s are interwoven: This “diver” cycle relates both to postmodern historical consciousness, to the corresponding discourse about the afterlife of myths, and to the revelations of crimes and killing methods used by the Argentine junta in the aftermath of the Falklands War (1982) around 1986. In doing so, Köhler tried out a new way of working for him: without any preparatory drawings, the entire artistic process was transferred directly to the canvas, with corrections and overpainting remaining visible (“Kampf bei den Dunkel Schiffen”, 1986, “Salvage”, 1986, “ Taucher ”, 1986/87, estate). The aesthetics of “finish” and sketch stand side by side in the end product and find adequate expression in a work block that was created during the anti-atomic force movement in Wendland , whose camps were visited several times by Anne and Florian Köhler around 1987. Even the titles of the spontaneously created pictures reflect the mood of the protest groups, inspired by awakening and utopia: “Beginning”, “Beginning”, “Dynamic Beginning”, “The Dream”, “Friendship House” (all 1988, estate).

In the late autumn of 1989, Köhler abruptly gave up work on the “Taucher” and “Wendland” pictures in view of the disruptive events following the opening of the German-German border on November 9th. By autumn 1990, paintings, gouaches and pastels with subjects from the Bible, ancient mythology, traditions in fairy tales and the headline press of the time were created in close succession, in which epochal upheavals with betrayal and repudiation are thematized: “Joseph and his brothers. Study on German History ”(1990),“ Skin off, half off, all off. Study on German-German History ”(1990),“ Leichen im Keller ”(1989), (estate).

1990-2013

With Anne and Florian Köhler's first stay in October 1990 on the island of Oléron, which is characterized by fishing, oyster farming and tourism, the artist's painting changed fundamentally again. At first he devoted himself fully to the working and living worlds of sea and oystercatchers in typical work clothing with their specific devices, installations and vehicles, which appear symbolically in the rapid application of paint and can only be identified or deciphered with intensive consideration such as local knowledge: Nets, Baskets, iron tables anchored in the mud for turning the sacks with the oysters, huts, boats, cutters in the ambience of the jetties, storage areas and harbors such as Le Château and La Cotinière ("Attendre", "Sur l'huitrière", 1991, “Time of the Little Fish”, 1992, “Seemannsgarn”, 1993, “Two boat lengths in the outside”, 2007, estate). The tenor of the pictures, mostly laid out in three zones between sky, water and land, is determined by an extremely varied color palette with subtle values that are both derived from nature and used in reflection of the history of painting between baroque, classic modern and pop art. In addition to the signs and times of the maritime world of work, Köhler recorded the island places of leisure with motifs of beach life, surfers and strollers ("Plage", 1997). This canon of topics was charged around the year 2000 with mythologically ancient scenarios in view of the refugee dramas on the coasts of the Mediterranean, which Koehler perceived early on. In paintings and pastels with titles such as “Homecoming from Troy” (1995/2005), “Before the Cliffs” (2000), “The Achaean triumvirate with Kassandra on the journey home” (2012, all in the estate), Köhler updated an “old theme “(2007), which he wrote in 2010 in connection with the in literature - he read u. a. Homer's Odyssey , Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy , Joseph Conrad , Robert L. Stevenson , Herman Melville - and art history formulated great tragedies on the sea: “(...) These are also the themes in the head that determine the progress of the painting process, that is, themes that have occupied me lately, for the past ten to fifteen years. It comes from my travels and my existence by the sea, it is the sea, the coast, the port, the departure, the arrival, the boat, the ship, the raft. Then, for example with the raft, the 'raft of Medusa' immediately appears, by Gericault. With that I already have a certain direction thematically: desperate, abandoned, doomed people. If I go further in this direction, I do, I paint, consciously a metamorphosis to the 'Raft of the Medusa', or do I drive the picture more in the direction of a barque from Delacroix, the famous Dante barque , Dante's journey into the underworld, where the analogy to these failed boat refugees is very close. Well, that's the big sea on which I move when I'm looking for a picture (...) ”.

Exhibitions, reception and collections

During his lifetime, Köhler had around seventy solo and more than a hundred group exhibitions. While in the Munich years working together and appearing in public was also a principle for the presentation of the works and Köhler was almost exclusively perceived in this context with participation in a group context (with WIR and GEFLECHT, among others in Munich, Augsburg, Hamburg, Essen, Kiel, Berlin, Nuremberg, Freiburg), with the move to Hamburg the exhibition practice also changed.

1972 first solo show in the no longer existing Galerie Altschwager (Hamburg-Eppendorf)

The radius of work presentations expanded continuously through galleries in Hamburg (Galerie Gabriele von Loeper, Studio Galerie Heinz Maschmann), Munich (Otto Galerie), Darmstadt (Galerie Doris Wullkopf), Berlin (Galerie Berlin), in Denmark and France.

2015/16 in Frankfurt ("Dust in my Eyes", Gallery Hanna Bekker vom Rath) and Hamburg ("Abtauchen. Auftauchen", Galerie Renate Kammer).

Participation in themed exhibitions:

1987 "Terror and Hope" a. a. Hamburger Kunsthalle
1989 "200 Years of the French Revolution" Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin
1995 “The Trail of the Other” Heine-Haus , Hamburg
2014 “German Pop” Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt a. M.

Solo exhibitions:

1992 "Florian Köhler. Pictures and works on paper 1961–1990. Herford Art Association
1999 “Florian Köhler. The painter consists of pictures “ Kunsthalle Schweinfurt
2010 “Florian Köhler. The Hamburg Years 1970–2010 “ Kunsthaus Hamburg
2013 “Florian Köhler. The distant island “ Museum for current art - Hurrle Collection , Durbach with more than 70 paintings and objects from 1960 to 2010 as well as current pastels

Further exhibitions:

January 25 - May 3, 2015 WIR group: 1959 - 1965 Museum Lothar Fischer , Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz
May 22 - September 13, 2015 Kunsthalle Schweinfurt with 60 works
2017/2018 "Florian Köhler. The night is darkest at daybreak" with Lothar Fischer, Kunsthalle Schweinfurt, paintings and works on paper by Florian Köhler with sculptures in clay, bronze and iron by Lothar Fischer

The artist's works are scattered in private ownership, as concentrated collections in the Frankfurt area as well as in public and institutional institutions such as ADAC Art Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art - Hurrle Durbach Collection, German Workers Museum Dortmund, Kunsthalle Schweinfurt, Kunsthalle Emden, Museum Lothar Fischer, Neumarkt id Upper Palatinate.

literature

Susanna Partsch : Koehler, Florian . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 81, de Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-023186-1 , p. 117.

Florian Köhler - Pictures 1980–1984 , exh. Cat., Text: Martin Deppner, Brühl, 1985. Geflecht.Antiobjekte 1965–1967, exhibition catalog, Cordonhaus, Cham, 1984.

Florian Köhler - pictures and gouaches , exhibition catalog, text: Petra von der Osten-Sacken, "About realities that are created in the head." Cat., Studio-Galerie Heinz Maschmann, Hamburg, 1986.

Braid . Anti-objects 1965–1967 , exh. Cat., Galerie Christa Schübbe, Mettmann, 1986. (with a contribution by Ottmar Bergmann) Brühler Kunstverein (ed.),

Group WIR, 1959–1965, Bachmayer, Heller, Köhler, Naujoks, Rieger , exhibition catalog, Kunstverein Munich; Art Association Salzburg, 1987.

The trace of the other , exhibition catalog (with Kitaji, Auerbach ea), text: Martin Deppner, Heinrich-Heine-Haus, Hamburg, 1988.

Cobra, trace, we, mesh, collective Herzogstrasse , exhibition catalog, Ganserhaus, Wasserburg am Inn, 1983.

Florian Köhler - new pictures , exhibition catalog, Studio Galerie Hamburg, 1988.

Florian Köhler: Pictures and drawings , exhibition catalog, Galerie Gabriele von Loeper Hamburg, 1988

Florian Köhler: Pictures from 1960–1990 , exhibition catalog, Galerie Gabriele von Loeper Hamburg, 1991.

Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen (Hrsg.): The group GEFLECHT. Antiobject 1965–1968 , exhibition catalog, Munich, 1991.

Florian Köhler - Oil paintings , Aust. Kat., Galerie Berlin, 1994. Florian Köhler: Pictures from three decades, exhibition catalog, Kunstverein Herford, 1993.

Andreas Girth (Eds.), Andreas Girth, Florian Köhler, Dagmar Rauwald: Ins Bild - Painting 1995 , exhibition catalog, Kampnagelfabrik Hamburg, 1995.

Florian Köhler: New Oil Paintings 1990 to 1995 , exhibition catalog, Galerie von Loeper, Hamburg 1995.

Andrea Brandl, Florian Köhler: The painter consists of pictures , exhibition catalog, city collections Schweinfurt, 1999.

Group SPUR, Villa Stuck catalog, 2006

Pia Dornacher, Lydia Rea Hartla, Selima Niggl (eds.): Braided group , exhibition catalog, Munich 2007.

Lukas Baden, Golgotha vs. home training. Giving everything in the present - Florian Köhler , in: Margrit Brehm (Ed.), Wegbereiter - Wegbegleiter, exhibition catalog, Museum of Contemporary Art - Hurrle Durbach Collection, 2010, pp. 74–77.

Axel Heil : Florian Köhler Ferne Insel , Wunderhorn, Heidelberg, 2013 ISBN 978-3-88423-434-1

Group WE: 1959-1965 . Hans Matthäus Bachmayer, [an exhibition by the Lothar & Christel Fischer Foundation and the city of Neumarkt id OPf .; Museum Lothar Fischer, January 25 - May 3, 2015; Kunsthalle Schweinfurt, May 22 - September 13, 2015]. ed. by Pia Dornacher and Selima Niggl. With contribution by Andrea Brandl, Schreiber Munich, 2015, ISBN 978-3-88960-146-9

Florian Köhler: The night is darkest at daybreak and Lothar Fischer , Kunsthalle Schweinfurt, ISBN 978-3-94525-512-4

Magazines and leaflets from braid

SPUR WIR (magazine), No. 1, Munich 1965
"Protest against labyrinths ...", in Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin, October 23, 1966
GEFLECHT (magazine), No. 2, Munich 1966
BRAID emergency issue (leaflet), Munich 1967

Movie

Pictures are self-assertion - Florian Köhler, painter , film by Lucas Maria Böhmer
Florian Köhler … painting consists of preoccupation with color, 2012, camera and editing: Thilo Eckholdt

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Heinrich Jost: Utility graphics and free art. On the work of Georg Johann Köhler. Reprint from the magazine "Nutzgraphik". cit. 1944, pp. 3-12.
↑ Cf. overall: Waltraud Brodersen, Claus Mewes: Biography, in: Florian Köhler. Submerge. Pop up. Pictures, drawings and pastels 1964 to 2012, catalog Galerie Renate Kammer, Hamburg, Lüdenscheid 2016, p. 75ff.
↑ Hans Platschek: New Figurations. From the workshop of today's painting, Munich 1959
↑ Dedicated Art. Group workshop. Central Library Gallery, Landesbank Galerie Hamburg (with A. Broer, HG Dieckhoff, G. Feil, G. Jeske, W. Kirschner, A. and F. Köhler, C. and E. Krämer, W. Skoluda, A. v. Meisenbug, M. Pixa, W. Schäfer, C. Wippermann), Hamburg 1975. People / pictures. Group workshop. Galerie Schnecke, tower on the Moorweide, Rothenbaumchaussee, Hamburg 1977.
↑ Christoph Krämer, Florian Köhler, Manfred Pixa: Wall picture Siedlung Sonnenland, Hamburg Billstedt 1976/77 (destroyed); see: Waltraud Brodersen u. a .: Residents recognize each other. Cooperation between artists, social workers and the population in the Sonnenland settlement, in: tendenzen, no. 116, Nov./Dec. 1977, p. 16ff
↑ On the artist's work, see: Anne Köhler. City structure and nature experience. Pictures from two decades, text: Waltraud Brodersen, Hamburg 1996. Anne Köhler. Walks, text: Waltraud Brodersen, Lübeck 2015.
↑ Cf.: Claus Mewes: Florian Köhler - entwining and back lights, in: Florian Köhler. Submerge. Auftauchen, catalog for the exhibition at Galerie Renate Kammer, Lüdenscheid 2016, p. 6f
↑ Fig. S. Florian Koehler. New Pictures, Studio Galerie Hamburg, December 6, 1988 to January 12, 1989, Text: Waltraud Brodersen, Claus Mewes, (Catalog 15) Hamburg 1988.
↑ On the occasion of a retrospective of Köhler's work entitled “The Hamburg Years 1970–2010” at the Kunsthaus Hamburg, Thilo Eckoldt (spitting image film production) shot the video “Florian Köhler”, from which is quoted here.

personal data
SURNAME	Koehler, Florian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German painter, graphic artist and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH	January 28, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH	Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH	7th August 2013
Place of death	Hamburg

[1] Heinrich Jost: Utility graphics and free art. On the work of Georg Johann Köhler. Reprint from the magazine "Nutzgraphik". cit. 1944, pp. 3-12.

[2] Cf. overall: Waltraud Brodersen, Claus Mewes: Biography, in: Florian Köhler. Submerge. Pop up. Pictures, drawings and pastels 1964 to 2012, catalog Galerie Renate Kammer, Hamburg, Lüdenscheid 2016, p. 75ff.

[3] Hans Platschek: New Figurations. From the workshop of today's painting, Munich 1959

[4] Dedicated Art. Group workshop. Central Library Gallery, Landesbank Galerie Hamburg (with A. Broer, HG Dieckhoff, G. Feil, G. Jeske, W. Kirschner, A. and F. Köhler, C. and E. Krämer, W. Skoluda, A. v. Meisenbug, M. Pixa, W. Schäfer, C. Wippermann), Hamburg 1975. People / pictures. Group workshop. Galerie Schnecke, tower on the Moorweide, Rothenbaumchaussee, Hamburg 1977.

[5] Christoph Krämer, Florian Köhler, Manfred Pixa: Wall picture Siedlung Sonnenland, Hamburg Billstedt 1976/77 (destroyed); see: Waltraud Brodersen u. a .: Residents recognize each other. Cooperation between artists, social workers and the population in the Sonnenland settlement, in: tendenzen, no. 116, Nov./Dec. 1977, p. 16ff

[6] On the artist's work, see: Anne Köhler. City structure and nature experience. Pictures from two decades, text: Waltraud Brodersen, Hamburg 1996. Anne Köhler. Walks, text: Waltraud Brodersen, Lübeck 2015.

[7] Cf.: Claus Mewes: Florian Köhler - entwining and back lights, in: Florian Köhler. Submerge. Auftauchen, catalog for the exhibition at Galerie Renate Kammer, Lüdenscheid 2016, p. 6f

[8] Fig. S. Florian Koehler. New Pictures, Studio Galerie Hamburg, December 6, 1988 to January 12, 1989, Text: Waltraud Brodersen, Claus Mewes, (Catalog 15) Hamburg 1988.

[9] On the occasion of a retrospective of Köhler's work entitled “The Hamburg Years 1970–2010” at the Kunsthaus Hamburg, Thilo Eckoldt (spitting image film production) shot the video “Florian Köhler”, from which is quoted here.