Günter Rittner

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Self-portrait from 1997

Günter Rittner (born March 11, 1927 in Breslau , Lower Silesia Province ; † November 23, 2020 in Munich ) was a German painter and graphic artist . He is one of the most important German portrait painters of the 20th and 21st centuries. With Rittner's paintings by Ludwig Erhard and Kurt Georg Kiesinger , the then Chancellor Helmut Schmidt founded the Chancellor Gallery in the Federal Chancellery in 1976 .

Life

Günter Rittner made portrait drawings of his grandparents at the age of six. In 1939 he drew soldiers and wounded in a hospital in the Giant Mountains . From 1939 he attended evening courses in natural drawing at the State Academy for Arts and Crafts in Breslau, where he met his artist friend, the painter and graphic artist Hans-Ulrich Buchwald .

With his first self-portrait in oil, he won first prize in a provincial competition in 1943. In 1944 he was called up for military service. At the end of the war in 1945 he was taken prisoner by the British . There he first painted fellow prisoners, then the guards and finally the camp commanders. After his release, he was able to finance his studies and deepen his talent through portraits of members of the American occupation forces. From 1948 he lived in Munich , where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts until 1953 . His teachers were Josef Hillerbrand and Walther Teutsch. The suffering and death experienced during the soldier's time was also expressed in his pictures. The role models Edvard Munch , Ernst Barlach and Käthe Kollwitz inspired him in a similar way as Paul Cézanne , van Gogh , Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec .

In 1953 Rittner started his freelance work. He then went on various study trips to France, England and Italy, where numerous city and landscape pictures were created. In 1966 he showed his works for the first time in Munich in an exhibition at the Deutsches Theatermuseum . He then received numerous orders from politics, business and science, such as the former Federal Chancellors Ludwig Erhard and Kurt Georg Kiesinger and former Federal President Walter Scheel . In 1978 Rittner undertook another study trip to Greece. In 1979 he took part in an exhibition at the Kassel Art Association . In 1980 he married and first moved with the family to Mallorca and 1986 to Gran Canaria , where he spent the winter months. The son Cornelius emerged from the marriage.

Günter Rittner was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit in 1989 . In 1986 he portrayed Walter Scheel a second time as an honorary citizen for the city of Solingen . He donated the fee of 23,000 DM at the time to the Solingen Diesterweg Foundation for children with learning disabilities.

Günter Rittner died in November 2020 at the age of 93 in a senior citizen's home in Munich.

plant

Therese Giehse (1966)
Hans Jochen Vogel (1977)
Press room foyer with the Chancellor Gallery

1950 Rittner portrayed Princess Pilar of Bavaria . She proved to be helpful because as a painter she had the necessary understanding and, as president of the German-American women's club, she paved many a path for him. In the same year, portraits of the then US State Commissioner for Bavaria, George N. Shuster, and of eight main actors from the Oberammergau Passion Play followed . In 1952 he made studies by Werner Krauss , Will Quadflieg and Hermine Körner at the Hamburger Schauspielhaus . In 1954 and 1955 he painted the film director Paul Verhoeven and the actors Luise Ullrich , Winnie Markus , Carola Höhn and Bertl Schultes . Pictures by Curd Jürgens followed in 1964 and Paul Dahlke in 1965 . During this time, Rittner also portrayed the former Prime Ministers Fritz Schäffer , Wilhelm Hoegner and Alfons Goppel on behalf of the Bavarian State Chancellery . Schäffer wrote in October 1964 about the portrait painted by Rittner: "The picture by Rittner forces people to think about me - which flatters me."

The Munich biochemist and Nobel Prize winner Feodor Lynen in 1964 and Robert Huber in 2008, as well as the medical historian Werner Leibbrand in 1965 , joined the ranks of important scientists . The collaboration with the pianist Elly Ney was of great importance to Rittner . Mutual inspiration let Rittner paint in an unusually expressive way in 1964 and immerse himself in a universe that he did not know before.

In 1966 Rittner created the portrait of Therese Giehse in her leading role as Brecht's mother Courage . On the recommendation of the Munich city cultural advisor Herbert Hohenemser , Rittner began to create a gallery of outstanding members of the ensemble of the Münchner Kammerspiele . At the beginning of this episode stood Peter Lühr , Rudolf Vogel and Robert Graf , then Gertrud Kückelmann , Rolf Boysen and in 1967 Fritz Kortner . In addition, the portrait of the witty, smiling satirist Werner Finck , once the founder and director of the legendary Berlin cabaret Die Katakombe and the conductor and general music director Joseph Keilberth , was created in 1967 . Rittner donated the Keilberth picture to the Bavarian State Opera . The baritone Karl Schmitt-Walter and the concert singer Hans Hermann Nissen followed . In 1968 Heinz Rühmann made drawings , which he signed shortly before his death in 1994.

High church dignitaries also found their way into Rittner's work. In 1967 there was a portrait of Martin Niemöller , the former church president of the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau, in 1969 the picture of Julius Cardinal Döpfner and in 1998 the portrait of Cardinal Friedrich Wetter for the Archdiocese of Munich - Freising . From 1970 Rittner received numerous orders from business circles. He painted, among others, the Melsung pharmaceutical industrialist Otto Braun , the aircraft manufacturers Willy Messerschmitt and Ludwig Bölkow as well as Max Schmidheiny , Fritz Berg and Friedrich Wilhelm Fürst von Hohenzollern .

In 1975 Rittner painted the CSU chairman and Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss on behalf of the Bonn CSU regional group , in 1977 Munich's Lord Mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel for the Bavarian capital and in 1996 Minister of Culture Hans Zehetmair . The Impressionist manner turned out to be particularly suitable for the fixation of personality. Classical music was mostly part of Rittner's work and was a great inspiration for him. Also Senta Berger was "classified" musical. When he was painting it, he was listening to Mozart . On other occasions it was Bach and Beethoven , with Therese Giehse the 9th Symphony by Anton Bruckner .

In 1962 he took 18 pictures of Venice. Some of them are still there. Rittner painted in the Munich Hofgarten, on the Viktualienmarkt, on the Chinese Tower, at the Oktoberfest. As he grew older, he found more of his second subtle phase : in religious subjects such as depictions of the Passion of Christ .

Public collections

literature

Magazines and catalogs

watch TV

  • BR , evening show Nov. 22, 1966 and Feb. 11, 1967
  • BR , Rundschau Sept. 4, 1987 and Sept. 23, 1994, Rundschau Magazin, Sept. 4, 1987
  • ZDF , turntable May 2, 1967 and May 11, 1977, country journal March 13, 1992
  • RTL , Bavaria currently Sept. 7, 1992

Web links

Commons : Günter Rittner  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Portrait painter Günter Rittner has died , cultural news on deutschlandfunkkultur.de, published and accessed on November 26, 2020
  2. ^ Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters on the death of Günter Rittner , press release BKM from November 26, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Rittner, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw , Lower Silesia Province
DATE OF DEATH 23rd November 2020
Place of death Munich