Gotthard Graubner

Gotthard Graubner photographed by Lothar Wolleh

Grave of Gotthard Graubner at the Nordfriedhof Düsseldorf (2019)

Gotthard Graubner (born June 13, 1930 in Erlbach , Vogtland , Saxony ; † May 24, 2013 in Düsseldorf , North Rhine-Westphalia ) was a German painter .

Life

Graubner, who first started an apprenticeship as a printer, studied from 1947 to 1948 at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin . In 1948 he moved to the Dresden Art Academy , where he was de-registered as a result of the dismissal of his master Wilhelm Rudolph . In 1951 he was admitted again and in 1952 he was de-registered again. In 1954 he left the GDR together with his future wife Gitta and moved with her to Düsseldorf-Oberkassel. From 1954 to 1959 he studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . Gotthard Graubner was a student of Georg Meistermann until he was called to Karlsruhe, so that Graubner came to Karl Otto Götz's class for a while. Shortly afterwards he graduated from the academy.

From 1964 to 1965 he was an art teacher at the Lessing-Gymnasium in Düsseldorf. In 1965, the year his daughter was born, he was given a teaching position and from 1969 a professorship at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts . In 1968 and 1977 he took part in the documenta . From 1976 to 1998 he was professor for free painting at the State Art Academy in Düsseldorf . In the 2009/2010 winter semester he was made an honorary member of the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

In 1982 Graubner was invited to develop an artistic concept for the pavilion of the Federal Republic of Germany at the 40th Venice Biennale . He created a group of works with the titles color space body triptych 'Venezia' , Hommage à Tintoretto and Pensieri a Veronese . All large-format pictures were taken on site in Venice in 1982. After the Biennale, the works of Johannes Cladders were shown in the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach and in the Malmö Konsthall (1983). According to Cladders, Graubner was guided in the choice of colors for the works of Tintoretto and Veronese in the Scuola di San Rocco , Venice. Peter Iden , founding director of the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt acquired the entire cycle in 1984 for the Frankfurt Museum, where several presentations took place.

In 1988 he created two large abstract paintings for the Great Hall in the official residence of the Federal President ( Bellevue Palace in Berlin), the color space body encounters . They were painted on site by Graubner. Another well-known painting in public ownership is one of the works of art in the Reichstag building and hangs in a meeting room of the Reichstag : it is a large, landscape- format, so-called pillow picture .

Graubner lived and worked in Düsseldorf and on the Museum Island Hombroich in Neuss-Holzheim . He died shortly before his 83rd birthday. Gotthard Graubner was buried in the north cemetery in Düsseldorf .

plant

In his work, Graubner dealt with color as an object of painting . He has been creating abstract paintings since 1962 . He stretched the two-dimensional canvas on the stretcher over a thick layer of synthetic wadding. Objects he called pillow pictures were created . Between 1968 and 1972 he produced so-called “fog rooms” and since 1970 Graubner has called his works color space bodies . These are often large formats, such as B. the paintings in his cycle on Francis of Assisi . Graubner applied many layers of paint or glaze, whereby the suction power of the subsurface plays a role. The intensity of his painting style is decisive for its effect in different ways. In the process, color landscapes were created with calm inviting for contemplation; multicolored works are juxtaposed with monochrome pictures with the finest color nuances. The theme of Gotthard Graubner's art was to develop the color of its own, freed from the claim to have to represent something other than oneself.

documentary

In the summer of 2010, Graubner opened his studio to the filmmaker Tilman Urbach , and light monochrome paintings and works on paper were created directly in front of the camera. The focus of the documentary is on visits to the studio on the Hombroich Museum Island in Neuss, during which the over eighty-year-old painter told of his artistic driving forces, but also of his doubts and resistances in his long life. The film team then accompanied the artist to Paris, where Graubner visited his exhibition in the Karsten Greve gallery . The documentary Gotthard Graubner - Color-Space-Body started in German cinemas on September 3, 2015.

Awards

• 1987: August Macke Prize of the City of Meschede
• 1988: North German Art Prize
• 1992: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 2001: Otto Ritschl Prize
• 2002: Great Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Selected exhibitions

1960: Schmela Gallery , Düsseldorf 1968: documenta 4 , Kassel 1969: Kestner Society Hanover 1969: Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia , Düsseldorf 1970: Mannheim Art Association 1971: São Paulo Biennale , Brazil 1975: Hamburger Kunsthalle 1977: documenta 6 , Kassel 1977: Kunsthalle Düsseldorf 1979: ZERO Kunsthaus Zurich 1980: Kunsthalle Tübingen 1980: State Art Gallery Baden-Baden 1981: Galerie m, Bochum 1982: Venice Biennale , Venice, Italy 1982: Municipal Museum Abteiberg , Mönchengladbach 1982: A new Spirit in Painting, Royal Academy of Arts , London 1982: Fifth Triennale India, New Delhi 1985: Galerie m, Bochum 1986: Kunstmuseum Bonn 1987: Art Collection North Rhine-Westphalia (K20), Düsseldorf 1989–1990: Kunsthalle Bremen 1990: Situation Kunst (for Max Imdahl ), Bochum, permanent exhibition

1995: Saarland Museum Saarbrücken 1997–1998: State Museum Schwerin 1999: Kunstverein Münsterland, Coesfeld 2000: Saxon Academy of Arts Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett 2000: State Art Collections Dresden 2000: Museum Küppersmühle - Grothe Collection, Duisburg 2001: State Art Gallery Karlsruhe 2001–2002: Museum Wiesbaden 2005: Art Museum of China Academy of Art, Hangzhou 2005: Art Museum of China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing 2006: Shanghai Art Museum 2006: Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen The China Tour - Color Space Bodies and Works on Paper 2008: State Art Gallery Karlsruhe 2010: Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein , Vaduz 2011: Josef Albers-Museum Quadrat Bottrop , Bottrop 2011–2012: Kunsthalle Rostock 2013: Museum Kunstpalast , Düsseldorf, Hommage à Gotthard Graubner 2018: Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck , Remagen, Gotthard Graubner. Breathe with the pictures

student

• Rainer Lind

literature

• Klaus Honnef : Biennale in the wake of reaction , in: Kunstforum International , vol. 55, 9/82, Cologne 1982, p. 77.
• Richard Hoppe-Sailer: Color - Surface - Body - Space. Gotthard Graubner's painting in dialogue with the Hildesheim Bernward door, in: transitions | transitions. Gotthard Graubner - Bernward door - Qiu Shihua, ed. v. Michael Brandt u. Gerd Winner, Hildesheim 2014, pp. 6–15.
• Gotthard Graubner: Gotthard Graubner. Richter-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 978-3-933807-52-6 .
• Exhibition catalog: Gotthard Graubner , with an introduction by Wieland Schmied , Kestner Society, Hanover, exhibition No. 6, 1969.
• Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Hrsg.): Insights. The 20th century in the North Rhine-Westphalia Art Collection, Düsseldorf. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit 2000, ISBN 3-7757-0853-7 .
• Petra Richter: "Ed io anche son 'in arcadia" - German artists in dialogue with Italy. in: Joseph Imorde, Jan Pieper (Ed.): The Grand Tour in Modern and Post-Modern. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-484-67020-4 , pp. 225–246.
• Heinz-Norbert Jocks: The ear at the crime scene, Heinz-Norbert Jocks in conversation with Gotthard Graubner, Heinz Mack, Roman Opalka, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker . Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7757-2509-5 .

Web links

Commons : Gotthard Graubner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Gotthard Graubner in the catalog of the German National Library
• Gallery in Bochum
• Materials by and about Gotthard Graubner in the documenta archive
• Gotthard Graubner on kunstaspekte.de
• Film page Gotthard Graubner - Color-Space-Body

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the death of Gotthard Graubner . wdr3.de. May 26, 2013. Archived from the original on January 7, 2014. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
2. ↑ Gotthard Graubner in the Munzinger archive , accessed on January 5, 2012 ( beginning of article freely accessible).
3. ↑ Georg Imdahl : Colorist by his own grace in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 27, 2013, p. 10.
4. ↑ Gotthard Graubner - Magician of Color. In: www.kunstakademie-duesseldorf.de. Retrieved September 26, 2019 . 
5. ^ Johannes Cladders, Gotthard Graubner, exhibition of his contribution to the Venice Biennale 1982 in the pavilion of the Federal Republic of Germany , Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach 1982.
6. ↑ Gotthard Graubner , Malmö Konsthall, Malmö 1983.
7. ^ Matthias Bleyl: Gotthard Graubner. Venezia color space body at the 40th Venice Biennale in 1982 . Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main 1991 ( worldcat.org [accessed February 21, 2020]).
8. ^ Peter Iden , Rolf Lauter : Pictures for Frankfurt. Inventory catalog of the Museum of Modern Art. Munich 1985, pp. 58f, 172f. ISBN 978-3-7913-0702-2 .
9. ^ Andreas Bee: Ten years of the Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt am Main . Cologne 2003. ISBN 3-8321-5629-1
10. ^ Website of the Federal President , accessed on January 5, 2012.
11. ↑ Internet site of the Bundestag.
12. ↑ Gotthard Graubner's biography , accessed on January 5, 2012.
13. ↑ Helga Meister: The painter Gotthard Graubner is dead. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung of May 24, 2013, accessed on May 24, 2013.
14. ↑ Sabine Oelze: Visionary of Color: Gotthard Graubner is dead. , Dw.de, May 25, 2013, accessed on May 28, 2013.
15. ^ XI Bienal de São Paulo, Catálogo , 1971, p. 22 .
16. ↑ He created the works in the German pavilion there, according to Petra Richter: Ed io ... , p. 229.
17. ↑ Information on the website of the Museum Weserburg , accessed on May 28, 2013.
18. ^ Gotthard Graubner - Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 1, 2018 ; accessed on May 1, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.