Gudrun Oltmanns

Gudrun Oltmanns

Gudrun Oltmanns (born August 20, 1959 in Olbernhau ; † November 24, 2001 in Dresden ) was a German artist .

Life

The artist Gudrun Oltmanns was born in Olbernhau in the Ore Mountains in 1959 as the fourth child of Günther and Brigitte Oltmanns. The father was a pastor, the mother a librarian. She spent her childhood in Deutschneudorf until the family moved to Possendorf near Dresden in 1969 .

In 1975 she graduated from the Polytechnic High School and began an apprenticeship as a wood sculptor in the VEB Stilmöbel Rabenau . In the first two years of her apprenticeship, she also attended the drawing circle in the high-grade steel plant in Freital under the direction of Werner Haselhuhn . In 1979 I finished my apprenticeship and worked for a few months as an assistant in child psychiatry in the city of Wechselburg , where the family had meanwhile moved.

In 1980 she moved to Dresden to take an evening school course at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste for her Abitur. During this time she earned her living as a canteen operator (1980/82), at the post office (1982/83) and as a bakery assistant in the café on Körnerplatz in Dresden-Loschwitz (1983/84). Then she enrolled at the HfBK in 1984 to study sculpture . In 1989 Gudrun Oltmanns graduated with Professor Klaus Schwabe .

In 1986 she moved into an apartment in the historic Alte Feuerwache Loschwitz building , where she lived and worked from then on. In 1991, Loschwitz artists and art students occupied the house. In the same year she founded the association “Alte Feuerwache Loschwitz eV” together with other graduates of the University of Fine Arts in Dresden in order to promote and support the expression of artistic creativity.

Her African travels to Morocco (1992) and Ghana with the sculptor Thomas Reichstein (1995), the latter made possible by a grant from the Südstahl-Werkstiftung by Charlotte Tangerding , strongly influenced her style and shaped her future work. From this point on, however, her life was increasingly determined by her cancer. For this reason, in 1998 she moved from the Alte Feuerwache to the nearby Künstlerhaus Dresden-Loschwitz .

The artist died on November 24, 2001 of the consequences of her illness.

plant

On the occasion of her 50th birthday, Volker Lenkeit said in his thoughts on Gudrun Oltmanns:

“ As an artist like god, she created her beings from clay, in the forms of life, the seed, the stalk and again and again the human figure, she dissolved the gravity of the earth and often combined her seemingly imperfect figures with the perfection of nature. "

Gudrun Oltmanns mainly created sculptures , drawings and prints , specializing in the techniques of lithography and monotype . The motif of natural lightness runs through all of her works.

In her sculptural work she preferred clay and combined it with natural materials such as grains, stalks, fruits or feathers. Therefore, her work can largely be classified as an effect of Arte Povera . Her drawings stand out for their general simplicity, brittle lines and the deliberately rare use of color, which directs the viewer's focus to details.

Gudrun Oltmann's travels to Africa confirmed her choice of artistic means. There she found simple materials, humble people, the blazing sun and was inspired by them. She processed the impressions into works that were shown in the exhibition “Travel Memories” in the Galerie am Damm Dresden.

Afterlife

The last work of Gudrun Oltmann is the lithograph portfolio on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Kunstverein Alte Feuerwache Loschwitz. She could no longer complete this portfolio.

In 2009 she would have celebrated her 50th birthday. In honor of Gudrun Oltmann, parts of her estate were shown in a double exhibition in Dresden-Loschwitz. The Alte Feuerwache gallery presented a wide range of their works; the gallery on the dam turned to its “elementary event Africa”.

Exhibitions and participation in exhibitions

• 1987/88/89 “Spring Salon” student exhibition at the Dresden University of Fine Arts
• 1988 Meißen City Theater
• 1989 “Young Berlin Art” at the Berlin TV Tower
• 1990 Student exhibition at the HfBK Dresden and the Hanover University of Applied Sciences
• 1991 Joint exhibition in the art association Schloß Röderhof near Halberstadt
• 1991 "Vier1", Leonhardi Museum, Dresden
• 1992 "Happy Entanglement", Leonhardi Museum, Dresden
• 1992 "ALL & TAG" workshop, Galerie Nord, Dresden
• 1992 "Hand drawings by the artists of the association", Kunstverein Alte Feuerwache Loschwitz eV, Dresden
• 1993 “Ceramic open fire furnace in Saalfeld. Summer workshop 1993 ”, Saalfeld
• 1993 Personal exhibition "The possession of clay pigeons", Kunstverein Alte Feuerwache Loschwitz eV, Dresden
• 1993 Exchange exhibition, Oltmann's theme "The Arrival of the Beehive", Kunstfabrik Potsdam
• 1994 “Vereinsmeyerey” art association Alte Feuerwache Loschwitz eV, Dresden
• 1994 “Time - View. Art landscape in Saxony ”, 1st Saxon art exhibition after 1928, Dresden Castle
• 1995 "4th Summer workshop ceramic project open fire furnace “for the ceramic symposium, Saale-Galerie, Saalfeld
• 1995 “Oven figure in the still house. Metaphor of a kiln “, pottery Christine Freilang Bürgel / Jena
• 1995 "IV Pro Saxoniae 1995" Lithography Symposium, Neue Chemnitzer Kunsthütte, Chemnitz
• 1995 “Miniature”, Galerie am Damm, Dresden
• 1996 “Small Hygiene Museum”: Installation during the autumn festival “5 years of fire station”, Dresden
• 1997 “Travel memories. Gudrun Oltmanns “, Galerie am Damm, Dresden, personal exhibition
• 1997 “Echo / Regen”, Galerie Adlergasse, Dresden
• 1997 “Two times two”, Galerie Kasten, Dresden and Mannheim
• 1997 "5 Years of Ceramic Symposia in Saalfeld", Thuringian Museum of Local History, Saalfeld
• 1998 “Again and again Künstlerhaus”, Kunstverein Alte Feuerwache Loschwitz eV, Dresden
• 1998 “Schloßavanzen” Castle Klippenstein, Radeberg, monotypes
• 2001 "A eins", Kunstverein Alte Feuerwache Loschwitz eV, Dresden
• 2009 "Gudrun Oltmanns - Nachlass", Kunstverein Alte Feuerwache Loschwitz eV, Dresden

literature

• Peter Eisermann: Gudrun Oltmanns. Works from the estate. Galerie am Damm, Dresden 2010