Heinrich Louis Ney

Heinrich Louis Ney (born June 5, 1952 in Interlaken ) is a Swiss artist . The painter, draftsman and action artist self-taught developed a technique of drawing compression with colored pencils, ink and acrylic. One of his best-known sponsors was the Basel art scholar Thomas Stoll. Ney lives in his studio in Zurich's old town.

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Life

Born on June 5, 1952 in Interlaken, the middle of three children, Heinrich Louis Ney drew a lot at an early age, fantastic figures, as he relates, which especially astonished his paternal grandmother. Her husband, of French descent, had bought a slate quarry above Lake Brienz at a young age and trained as a demolition expert. But neither Ney's father, who continued the quarry, nor the mother, who immigrated from Tuscany, took particular notice of her son's artistic impulses, despite the grandmother's intercession. And there was hardly more encouragement from the drawing teacher than praise for a successful self-portrait.

Heinrich Ney completed an apprenticeship as a dental technician after leaving school. It was the time of the emerging hippie movement in the 1960s, and one of his best friends was the pianist Hanery Amman, who later founded the band Rumpelstilz with Polo Hofer in Interlaken and brought it to the stage for the first time, which shaped the brand name Swiss dialect rock. At that time, however, Ney was more inspired by jazz rock from Weather Report and Klaus Doldinger's group Passport - and especially the images of the surrealists. Their motives, Ney recalls, had a hallucinatory energy on him. He let them flow into his pictures even years later, when he had already established himself in the Chur art scene.

Hanery Amman raved about the Graubünden capital. There Heinrich Ney found a first job and soon recognition as a painter after a year-long journey that took him together with a friend from Meiringer in a 2CV van across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to Goa and back to Switzerland. Although he had always remained true to his passion for drawing, earning a living with it only became an issue when an active friend arranged a first exhibition for him in the St. Moritz Hotel “Palace”.

Spurred on by the unexpected success of this exhibition and an enthusiastic review in what was then the “Bündner Zeitung”, Ney quit his job and set up a studio that soon caused a sensation in Chur under the name “Bärenloch”, especially since there were hardly any galleries there. He put an old GDR concert grand in his workspace, opened it to visitors and organized music sessions, performances and his own and guest exhibitions together with the Czech artist Vladimir Zàk. A long journey to Asia followed at the end of the 1970s, from which he again brought back many artistic motifs, then Heinrich Ney moved to Zurich as a freelance artist, where he still lives today with a five-year break in Paris (2000–2005).

The artistic work

“In order to get closer to the impossible,” says Heinrich Ney, “you first have to do the feasible.” “Like Giacometti or Morandi,” adds Ney, “who have always tried to get closer to the unattainable.” In his studio in Chur sculptures, spontaneous, figurative painting or naturalistic architectural watercolors and oil paintings were created in which nooks and crannies dominated and for which he had created the term "Angulism".

In Zurich its phase of consolidation begins. The signs and figures, which have always easily flowed out of his hand meditatively, begin to interact, form “chain reactions”, as the cultural journalist and documentary filmmaker Peter K. Wehrli described it in 1988 on the occasion of an exhibition in Wengihof, and prove their “rebellious abundance of life “The whole picture. Over the years, Heinrich Ney's figures get smaller and smaller. In the works “Migration” they dissolve towards the edge of the picture from pictogram to pixel. In doing so, Ney visualizes his interpretation of this topic, which is still topical: the migrants who are looking for a home become anonymous, cultures align and disappear. In the work “Thoughts on Nothing” there are only thousands upon thousands of colored pencil or ink pen strokes in the flowing transitions of which the NZZ art journalist Philipp Meier recognized the “sfumato effect of a gymnast”.

The series of images of the «Black Holes» was created in Paris, where Heinrich Ney lived for five years after 2000, first in the studio of the Basel artist Werner Ritter, then for three years at Montmartre. In these works, where everything becomes nothing, he consistently explored his Sysiphus technique to his own physical and psychological limits. After months of meticulously setting the tiniest lines for a piece of work, he reports, he had to pause for a long time to protect his eyes. He recently resumed this technique. Now the lines no longer create amorphous structures, but portraits of naked women. Everything will come from nothing.

Heinrich Ney's pictures are now represented in many well-known private and institutional collections. However, despite good offers, he always rejected the close connection to a gallery. Even Ney's most renowned sponsor Thomas Robert Stoll, the former director of the Basel Kunsthalle and organizer of the first Swiss Giacometti exhibition, could not persuade him in the 1980s to give up his freedom in order to benefit from the network of the modern art market. Ney preferred to exhibit with artist friends like Paul Sieber or Walter Wegmüller or alone and also to sell his pictures under his own direction in his studio. If he knows where one of his pictures is going, says Heinrich Ney, it fills him with great joy: "Only then does a picture begin to come to life for me."

Artistic themes and works

• Angulism: works in which rough edges dominate
• Chain reactions: phase of compression with characters and figures that become smaller and smaller over the years.
• Migration: In these works the figures dissolve towards the edge of the picture from pictogram to pixel.
• Thoughts of nothing: Thousands of colored pencil or ink pen strokes with flowing transitions.
• Black holes: exploring the line technique up to your own physical and psychological limits.
• Portraits of naked women: exploring his colored pencil stroking technique to the point of complete graphic figuration.

Publications

• Idea and design of the cover of the SBB newspaper "Bahnhofblatt" 1993
• Design of the poster for the Bündner Herbstmesse Gehla (anniversary poster 1st prize)

Movies

• Short film "A Mugge im Oug" 1993 (financed by the Swiss television DRS, the canton of Bern and others)
• Further projects in progress

Web links

• "Art" magazine Graubünden and Liechtenstein, issue 4

Individual evidence

• Text: André Behr, portrait of Heinrich Ney "Everything is nothing, nothing is everything" in the magazine "Kunst" Graubünden and Liechtenstein, issue 4, (pages 50–55), Verlag Printmedien Company Chur, ISBN 978-3-9523366-3- 2
• Photos: Patric Bühler (portrait, in the studio, woman on roller board, black holes, migration)
• Peter K. Wehrli, acknowledgment on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition in the Galerie Klubschule Wengihof, Zurich, 1988
• Philippe Meier, “Commitment to Swiss Art - The Vontobel Collection” in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) on July 24, 2001
• “Nothing is the dissolution of everything”, criticism of the exhibition in the Vogtel Gallery, Herrliberg, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) on June 8, 2005