Hans-Georg Dornhege
Hans-Georg Dornhege (* 1938 in Münster ) is a German artist. Dornhege lives and works in Münster, Berlin and Artà on Mallorca.
Astronaut pictures
While still studying at the Berlin State University of Fine Arts , Hans-Georg Dornhege became a member of the “ Großgörschen 35 ” exhibition group , in which young artists had come together who were suspicious of the previously predominant direction of informal art with its material effects and wild gestures had become. Artists who looked for their role models in Pop Art of English or American provenance and who created representational painting that was interested in social issues. Hans-Georg Dornhege, still a master student of Fred Thieler in 1965 , has been counted as an important representative of the much-acclaimed " New Realism " since his first exhibitions . In 1967 the art critic Camilla Blechen wrote about an exhibition by the “New Realists” in Berlin, in which Wolfgang Petrick , Peter Sorge , Gerhard Richter , Konrad Lueg and Fritz Köthe , among others , were involved: “The 28-year-old Hans- Georg Dornhege… His subject, which is also formally well mastered, is space travel. Astronauts sit on launching ramps in no-man's-land and wait ... Dornhege's pictures report in concert pitch of the monstrously natural way with which people are made into test objects. "
In his astronaut pictures, Hans-Georg Dornhege assumes published photos from the training of the future space travelers; he portrays his modern heroes as anonymous figures in the midst of a technically sterile and inhospitable environment painted with dark glue paints. The chalk hatchings, with which he suggests their outlines more than they capture, give the figures something unreal: Buckled into their equipment or groping in front of intangible realities, they remain in a pose of neither-nor, they appear as "larvae and appendages of a superior technique ". Dornhege does not focus on the fascination of the most advanced technology or the daring of its protagonists, but rather the existential basic experience of a situation that is no longer self-determined and controllable - the astronauts become a modern archetype of our technical civilization in all its ambiguity.
The American landscapes
Dornhege increases the inhospitableness of the pictorial spaces in his “astronaut pictures” in his landscape pictures, which the critic Heinz Ohff already reported on the occasion of the painter's first solo exhibition in 1965 in the Großgörschen gallery: “In the surroundings of realizable utopias, the image of reality has also changed. It has become more harsh, more realistic and, in return, it opens up new dimensions that we have to see in order to understand it. The landscape is not conquered and understood here with a walking stick, but as we hike it today, through the windshield, as it were. (It all looks a bit like Arizona). ”After traveling to the USA, Hans-Georg Dornhege paints his strangely unreal, not clearly localizable“ American Landscapes ”. The starting point are photos taken from the moving car. Landscapes of an urban periphery, a chemical plant on an arterial road, industrial districts on the outskirts, not clearly in the city, not clearly outside. Masts, power cables, chimneys, warehouses, oil tanks - deserted non-places to which the gray stripe of the passing asphalt brings an additional barrier and distance into the picture. Nothing invites you to linger in these everywhere-and-nowhere landscapes, which seem to be almost overwhelmed by a dull, poisonous sky, painted in glue and acrylic. The artist will later refer to images of a no man's land as "fringe zone landscapes", which herald the lack of habitation of modern humans, they "become independent into real allegories."
New York Protocol / Manhattan
With the pictures in the “New York Protocols” series, Hans-Georg Dornhege changes our perspective on the inhospitable nature of our civilization. He directs his gaze to life in the city itself, again his own photos taken during stays in New York are his starting point. The topic is no longer the deserted periphery, but zoomed-in excerpts from a hostile urbanity: locked iron doors clad in corrugated iron, like absent waiting people, peeling facades, passing buses. There are fragments of neglect and impoverishment that Dornhege brings into the picture, dark counterpoints to the metropolitan glamor and the abundance of lights in the tourist image of New York. The acrylic paintings of the New York series are painted in a cool and distant manner, but the artist's painterly handwriting remains visible. A second level in the form of a painted, transparent gauze is stretched in front of some of these almost photo-realistic urban interiors, creating an effect of depth. The picture becomes a three-dimensional object, it prompts the viewer to look closely, to step closer and to move in front of the picture. The painter “creates alienated, stage-like spaces, shows people in an artificial world like in a diorama ... Dornhege, when asked about the choice of his motifs and the associated view, sees in a big city as he experienced it in New York The backdrop for an extremely dramatic human event, which occurs everywhere in a similar form. ”Despite all the detachment with which Hans-Georg Dornhege directs his gaze to the remote New York, his“ real allegories ”have a certain melancholy and transience "Sad end-of-life fair", as Friedrich Rothe characterizes it, perfectly matches the atmosphere of this series of pictures.
Mallorca images
Trips to Chile and the island of Mallorca, where the artist bought a medieval townhouse in 1986 in the village of Artà , away from the tourist crowds and from then on uses it for regular stays, are soon reflected in his painting. Large-format oil paintings with a pronounced impasto painting style, landscapes in which the brushwork takes on an almost informal quality, a lightened palette and an iconography that resembles artist role models such as Anselm Feuerbach , Arnold Böcklin , Hans von Marées and Lovis Corinth more than quoted, draw these Mallorca pictures from the late 1980s. The charcoal drawing "Landscape near Arta Finca" from 1988 shows the virtuosity of the draftsman, who drives the landscape representation with its rock formations, trees, houses and vineyards to the brink of dissolution. A vehemence of the drawing hand can be ascertained, which also characterizes the painter at this time. Lovis Corinth, whom Fred Thieler, Dornhege's teacher at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences, had admired since his youth, seems to be the godfather of a kind of liberated painting and drawing that allows only a few reminiscences of the “New Realism” of earlier pictures. An intensive preoccupation with art historical tradition, with Velázquez , Rembrandt , Géricault or Delacroix , followed in the coming years. In the new millennium, the picture series “Heaven over San Jordi” brings a certain synthesis of the undercooled “fringe zone landscapes” of the 1970s and the later “violent” painting. The works, painted with acrylic paints on silver, show similar peripheral views as the “American Landscapes”. They, too, are mostly deserted, and the trimmed asphalt zones in the foreground give the impression of being photographed from a moving car. Parking garages, huge billboards in no man's land, civilization seems to have set out to take possession of the previously idyllic nature. But the colors and the painterly gesture of the pictures are freer, less oppressive than the American series. In them the painting itself is primarily the theme, prepared in small-format sketches, the San Jordi pictures show a subtle balance of free painting and still realistic, photographically trained, but milder gaze.
Drawings from the Camino de Santiago
The drawings of frottage from the Way of St. James , which have been made since 2008, represent a surprising development . In these travel sketches from the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela drawn on Chinese rice paper, the driver's glance is no longer constitutive, but the hiker's gaze, which for centuries has been a prerequisite for drawing landscapes and architecture in art history. The aesthetics of the drawing series “Buen Camino”, “El Camino Aragonés y sus Desvíos” and “Camino del Norte”, which Hans-Georg Dornhege and his wife created directly on the pilgrimage in 2008 and in the two following years undertakes is due to the conditions of the wandering - especially the minimization of weight and volume. They arise during the breaks, while resting or in the evening after the day's hike. The folds of the light and at the same time tear-resistant Chinese paper document the folding of the paper for the purpose of transport in the backpack. Rubbing through, frottage, with graphite from manhole covers, which the artist sees on the hike, form the starting point of an artistic travel documentation, which is then transferred to the respective sheet with ink drawings of facades, architectural details, altars, but also people or street scenes. Hans-Georg Dornhege himself describes the creation process of the drawings: “It turned out that the individual graphic sheets as a series were very much related to one another, but the graphical traces, which were also realized differently in the different situations of the camera, left the individual sheets in the multilayered coexistence Drawings and frottages always create a new internal dialogue. These image results also corresponded to my general mental constitution on the Camino, where the most varied, contradicting observations, sensations and thoughts often arise and which were followed up ... The work on the 17 graphic sheets on the Camino meant an additional burden in view of the general requirements of the Camino and too mastering effort. The charge could even be made that such activity is a distraction from the real thing. Nevertheless, I am convinced that this work was an important part of the camino, that the intensification of seeing and doing was 'coming to yourself', a spiritual-contemplative state, a gift, especially in the quiet of sacred spaces. "
With the drawings of the Way of St. James, Hans-Georg Dornhege found a new, rather quiet and chamber music perspective on the theme of the landscape, which has not let go of him for almost fifty years. A new vanishing point, very personal, and for that very reason all the more sustainable.
Solo exhibitions (selection)
| year | Place of issue | Exhibition title | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1964 | Gallery Großgörschen 35 , Berlin | "ASTRONAUTS AND AMERICAN LANDSCAPES" | |
| 1979 | Gallery 360 degrees, Wuppertal | Galerie Stein, Cologne "NEW YORK PROTOCOL" | |
| 1981/82 | Gallery W1-Enno Hungerland / Wuppertal, Städt. Galerie Schloss Oberhausen, Galerie am Savignyplatz / Berlin, Galerie Apex / Göttingen | "NEW YORK PROTOCOL", "EEMSHAFEN HOLLAND" | Large format pictures, picture objects, gouaches, photo screen prints |
| 1982 | Kunsthalle Valdivia / Chile, Goethe-Institut - Santiago de Chile, Galerie Enno Hungerland / Wuppertal, Ruhrländischer Künstlerbund / Essen | "NEW YORK PROTOCOL" + "CHILENIAN DIARY" | large format images |
| 1984 | Municipal Gallery / Bad Oeynhausen, Art Cologne - Gallery on Savignyplatz | "WESTPHALIA LANDSCAPES" | |
| 1985 | Gallery at Savignyplatz / Berlin | "CROSSED" | Paraphrases to paintings by Titzian, Veronese, Ter Borch, Fragonard, von Oer, Richter and Gericault |
| 1986 | Galerie S, Stadtsparkasse Münster | "THE MEETING IN ANGELMODDE", "WESTPHALIAN LANDSCAPES" | |
| Municipal theaters, Münster | "LOCUS AMOENUS - ARTA" | Beach pictures | |
| Karstadt AG, Münster department store | "WESTPHALIA LANDSCAPES" | 30 gouaches, permanent presentation | |
| 1991 | Sala d'Expositions Na Batlessa , Arta / Mallorca | "JARDINS D'ÁRTA" | Artanic landscapes |
| 1995 | Gallery at Savignyplatz / Berlin | "CARMERSTRASSE + POTSDAMER PLATZ 1941 + 1945" | Image objects |
| 1996 | Heart and Diabetes Center NRW / Bad Oeynhausen | "CALA TORTA" | Mediterranean landscapes and beach pictures |
| Infobox Potsdamer Platz / Berlin | "POTSDAMER PLATZ - 1945" | 4 image objects at "zero hour" | |
| 1999 | Art Association Kaponier / Vechta | "CARDINAL BY THE SEA" | Terracottas and large format pictures |
| 2000 | Gallery König / Münster | "LANDSCAPE" | joint exhibition with Teresa Reyes-Lorca |
| 2002 | Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection , Berlin | "THE ARRIVAL OF EMPLOYEE ADRIAEN PAUW WITH WIFE AND GRANDCHILD IN MÜNSTER" | Paraphrase to the painting by Ter Borch / purchase |
| 2003 | Gallery at Savignyplatz / Berlin | "FROM THE STAGE" | Paraphrases to collective pictures about the First World War |
| 2005/06 | Gallery at Savignyplatz / Berlin | "IN THE FACE OF" | Drawings in the face of pictures by other artists |
| 2007 | Michael Nolte Gallery / Münster | "SKY OVER SAN JORDI" | Street images from the periphery of Palma de Mallorca Airport |
| 2008 | Gallery at Savignyplatz / Berlin | "SKY OVER SAN JORDI" | Street images from the periphery of Palma de Mallorca Airport |
| Michael Nolte Gallery / Münster | "BUEN CAMINO" | Frottage with overdrawings, created on the Way of St. James in 2008 | |
| 2009 | Galeria Vicente Gracia Joyas / Valencia | "BUEN CAMINO" | Frottage with overdrawings, created on the Way of St. James in 2008 |
| 2010 | Michael Nolte Gallery / Münster | "EL CAMINO ARAGONÉS Y SUS DESVÍOS" | Frottage with overdrawings, created on the Way of St. James in 2009 |
| 2011 | Academy Franz-Wärme-Haus, Münster | "BUEN CAMINO" | Frottage with overdrawings, created on the Way of St. James in 2008 |
| 2012 | ARDEX information center / Witten | "ESCAPE POINTS" | Images and graphics 1965 - 2011 |
| Simon Nolte Gallery / Portocolom | "PAINTING AND PHOTOGRAPHY" | joint exhibition with Jürgen Klück |
Participation in exhibitions (selection)
| year | Place of issue | Exhibition title |
|---|---|---|
| 1964-1970 | Gallery G 35, Berlin | Exhibition genes of the group "Großgörschen 35" |
| 1967 | House at the Waldsee, Berlin | "NEW REALISM IN GERMANY" |
| Goethe Institute, Sao Paulo | "GRAVURA ALEMÀ DESDE 1945" | |
| 1968 | Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg | "INDUSTRY AND TECHNOLOGY IN GERMAN PAINTING ..." |
| 1969 | Westphalian Art Association, Münster | "ARTISTS FROM NRW", involved with photo printing "NEW YORK PROTOCOL" |
| 1980-2009 | Association for the organization of art exhibitions Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf | "GREAT DÜSSELDORFER ART EXHIBITION", participation in the annual exhibitions |
| 1982 | Westphalian State Museum, Münster | "ARTISTS FROM WESTPHALIA" |
| 1983-2009 | West German Artists Association | Participation in exhibitions |
| 1989 | Eva Poll Gallery, Berlin | "BIGGER BIRTHDAY 1969 - 1989" |
| Berlinische Galerie / Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin | "STATIONS OF MODERNITY" - "GROSSGÖRSCHEN 35" | |
| 1990 | Künstleronderbund / Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin | "KUNSTSZENE BERLIN WEST 86-89, NEW ACQUISITIONS" |
| 1991 | Kulturbahnhof, Düsseldorf | "LANDSCAPES" |
| 1993 | Künstleronderbund / Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin | "I. REALISMUSTRIAL" |
| 1995 | Association of Berlin Artists / Former State Kunsthalle Berlin | "POTSDAMER PLATZ" |
| 1996 | Künstleronderbund / Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin | "THE POWER OF IMAGES" |
| 2009 | West German Artists Association / Thyssen-Krupp, Duisburg | "NEW LANDSCAPES" |
| West German Artists Association / Lithuanian Artists' Association / Gallery "Meno parcas" Kaunas, Lithuania | "KAUNAS IN ART: CONTEXTS" | |
| 2010 | Künstleronderbund in Germany / Uferhallen, Berlin | "20 YEARS OF KÜNSTLERSONDERBUND" |
Literature (selection)
- Eckhart J. Gillen (Ed.): Großgörschen 35 . Departure for the art city Berlin 1964 . Exhibition catalog with texts by Barbara Esch Marowski, Lothar C. Poll , Eckhard J. Gillen. Haus am Kleistpark in cooperation with the Poll Art Foundation , Berlin 2014.
Web links
- Personal website of Hans-Georg Dornhege
- Profile of Hans-Georg Dornhege on the website of the Künstleronderbund
- Profile of Hans-Georg Dornhege on the website of Galerie Nolte
- Profile of Hans-Georg Dornhege on ArtFacts.net
Individual evidence
- ↑ Camilla Blechen: Made in Germany. Sixteen 'New Realists' in the Berlin 'Haus am Waldsee', FAZ from January 23, 1967.
- ↑ Friedrich Rothe: On the beach of Cala Torta, p. 193.
- ↑ Sepp Hiekisch-Picard in the catalog "Vanishing points".
- ↑ Heinz Ohff: The Realizable Utopia . In: Der Tagesspiegel , November 29, 1965.
- ↑ H.-G. Dornhege cited in: Riewert Ehrich: Images from no man's land or the 'other' America . In: Schwäbische Zeitung , June 30, 1984.
- ↑ Sepp Hiekisch-Picard in the catalog "Vanishing points".
- ↑ Ehrich.
- ^ Friedrich Rothe.
- ↑ Sepp Hiekisch-Picard in the catalog "Vanishing points".
- ↑ Sepp Hiekisch-Picard in the catalog "Vanishing points".
- ↑ Sepp Hiekisch-Picard in the catalog "Vanishing points".
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Dornhege, Hans-Georg |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1938 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Muenster |