Günter Thiele (artist)

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Günter Thiele (born August 12, 1930 in Leipzig ) is a German painter , draftsman and graphic artist . He lives and works in Leipzig.

life and work

After attending elementary school, Günter Thiele completed an apprenticeship as a radio mechanic from 1945 to 1949. Already in this early period there were first points of contact with the modern art ostracized by the National Socialists as well as first attempts at drawing and painting. An obligation to work in uranium mining forced Günter Thiele to flee to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, from which he returned that same year. With the assistance of Max Schwimmer , the exemption from work in the mining industry and admission to the Leipzig School of Applied Arts succeeded. Just one year later, increasing political pressures and the consolidation of dogmatic conceptions of art (“formalism discussion”) prompted Thiele to drop out of the course. In the 1950s, Thiele worked on his own initiative in the lithography workshop of the Leipzig University of Graphics and Book Art . The first valid works are created.

Thiele decided to study again and was admitted to the Berlin-Charlottenburg University of Fine Arts in 1954 . From 1956 to 1960 he studied under Hans Jaenisch and studied in Ernst Schumacher's painting class. An extended study trip to Italy in 1959 had a decisive effect on his artistic development and initiated the transition from early to major works. After completing his studies, Thiele returned to Leipzig and worked as a freelance painter and graphic artist. In 1975 Thiele was given a teaching position at the University of Graphic and Book Art in Leipzig , where he became an assistant in the basic painting / graphics department in 1980. From 1986 to 1992 a position as senior assistant followed (one of his students is Neo Rauch). Since 1993 he has been working freelance in Leipzig.

Günter Thiele's painterly oeuvre comprises around 215 paintings. In the first independent pictures, which were created from 1950 onwards, the searching character can still be clearly felt, which testifies to the painter's engagement with various artistic styles ( Impressionism , Expressionism , New Objectivity) and the orientation towards teachers and role models. The early works already show motifs from the artist's surroundings - views over the roofs of his hometown Leipzig and later Berlin, arranged still lifes in his own apartment and self-portraits. At the beginning of the 1960s, Thiele's artistic style solidified and the first multi-figure pictures emerged.

"After a radical simplification of the picture elements through a strictly flat structure and incorporeal, undifferentiated use of colors, its development from around 1960/61 onwards led to a harmonization of the picture elements."

The Leipzig cityscapes form the central theme of his work. In them, Thiele sketches daily life and places shadowy figures in backdrops consisting of street lines, rows of houses, gardens and parks. The narrative moment recedes; Actions and lines of sight are avoided. The artist is concerned with capturing a moment, his images are urban snapshots. The strict perspective of the architectural scenery, the avoidance of a dramatic play of light and shadow, the unobtrusiveness and transparency of the tonal colors used and the reduced style of painting cause the viewer to slow down and quiet, but also to melancholy.

Günter Thiele belongs to the so-called Leipzig School , which developed in the mid-1960s as a counter-movement to socialist realism in the GDR. Your founding fathers are Werner Tübke , Wolfgang Mattheuer and Bernhard Heisig . Thiele shares representational painting and craftsmanship with the artists of the Leipzig School . The symbolism or the reception of ancient myths is alien to Thiele. His urban landscapes are composed soberly and executed in a factual painting style. Except for a few years, Thiele spent his entire life in Leipzig. In his pictures, the development of the city - exemplified for other German cities - between "... war, post-war, reconstruction, change and decay, and finally also renewal [...]" can be traced.

Factory locations

Exhibitions

  • Günter Thiele. Paintings, drawings, prints. University of Leipzig , custody, exhibition center Kroch-Haus, June 24 - July 27, 1996
  • Günter Thiele. Painting, drawings. Neuer Leipziger Kunstverein eV in the Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig, January 15 - March 12, 2006
  • Günter Thiele. City life. Galerie Schwind, Leipzig , June 2 - July 28, 2012
  • Günter Thiele. Galerie Schwind, Berlin, February 14th - April 26th, 2014
  • Leipzig annual exhibition June 6-29, 2014
  • Künstleronderbund in Germany ("War and Peace"), Uferhallen Berlin, September 7-28, 2014
  • A matter of opinion - Leipzig painters and their city , Gallery of the New Augusteum Leipzig, June 5 - August 29, 2015

literature

  • Exhibition catalog "Günter Thiele - Stadtleben", Galerie Schwind Leipzig 2012 (with a contribution by Meinhard Michael and the catalog raisonné of the paintings). ISBN 978-3-932830-68-6 .
  • Exhibition catalog “Günter Thiele. Painting • Drawings “, Neuer Leipziger Kunstverein eV and Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig , Leipzig 2006 (with a contribution by Rainer Behrends). ISBN 3-9810366-1-1 .
  • Exhibition catalog "Günter Thiele - Pictures", Gallery Schwind | Leipzig. ISBN 3-932830-54-7 .
  • Exhibition catalog “Günter Thiele. Paintings • Drawings • Prints ”, custody of the University of Leipzig, 1996 (with a contribution by Rainer Behrends).
  • Dissertation "Leipzig urban landscape in the painting of Kurt Dornis and Günter Thiele" Frauke Hinneburg, August 1989, Karl Marx University Leipzig (unpubl.)
  • Article "Günter Thiele", by Klaus Märtens. In: Gallery. Forum of Members and Friends of the Artists' Association, Issue 12, 2008, pp. 40–42.
  • Article “Günter Thiele. A quiet great painter in Leipzig ”, by Rainer Behrends. In: kunststoff - the culture magazine for Central Germany, 2006, pp. 56–58.
  • Article “Microdramas here and now”, review of the exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig by Meinhard Michael. In: LVZ, February 20, 2006.
  • Article “Leipzig shaped him. On the 75th birthday of the painter Günter Thiele ”, by Walter Hertzsch. In: Leipziger Blätter No. 47, 2005, pp. 34/35.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography, In: Rainer Behrends (ed.): “Günter Thiele. Paintings, drawings, prints ”, Leipzig 1996, p. 5.
  2. ↑ Rainer Behrends: Impulsive draftsman, but hesitant painter In: Rainer Behrend (ed.): “Günter Thiele. Paintings, drawings, prints ”, Leipzig 1996, p. 9.
  3. ↑ Rainer Behrends: "Character and poetry of figure-animated urban spaces" In: Rainer Behrends (ed.): "Günter Thiele. Paintings, drawings, prints ”, Leipzig 1996, p. 10.
personal data
SURNAME Thiele, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, draftsman and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig