Heinz Ridder

Heinz Ridder (born April 13, 1920 in Recklinghausen , Westphalia , † December 31, 1986 in Ramsau , Austria) was a German painter , graphic artist and art teacher .

biography

Ridder studied at the Folkwang Master School in Essen from 1939 to 1941 . He attended the master class for commercial graphics and typography before turning entirely to drawing and painting. Forced by the Second World War, he broke off his art studies. From 1941 to 1945 he did his military service and was a prisoner of war in Russia.

After the Second World War he worked as a freelance painter and graphic artist. Ridder belonged to the generation of young post-war artists who took an active part in the cultural reconstruction of the Rhine and Ruhr after the cultural deforestation by the dictatorship of National Socialism. In 1948, along with Gustav Deppe , Thomas Grochowiak , Ernst Hermanns , Heinrich Siepmann , Emil Schumacher and Hans Werdehausen, he was one of the co-founders of the artist group “ Junge westen ” in Recklinghausen.

Ridder was from 1955 to 1986 chairman of the Vestischen Künstlerbund. From 1960 to 1986 he was also a member of the West German Artists 'Association and at times also of the German Artists' Association . From 1949 to 1985 he taught as an art teacher at the Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gymnasium Recklinghausen. From 1968 to 1982 he headed the Recklinghausen youth work school.

Ridder died in 1986 while cross-country skiing in Schladming / Austria.

Memorial "Indivisible Germany"

Memorial to indivisible Germany

Ridder received first prize in the 1959 competition announced by the city of Recklinghausen for a “Indivisible Germany” memorial.

The memorial consists of two large concrete blocks that symbolize the divided Germany. "Berlin" is highlighted and connected to West Germany by iron bars. The other iron connections between West and East Germany are interrupted. On the front of the left block are the names of the major cities of "Hamburg, Cologne, Munich"; on the right block of "Magdeburg, Leipzig, Dresden, Koenigsberg, Stettin, Beuthen". The right-wing bloc, which symbolizes East Germany, was wrapped in barbed wire until the reunification of Germany. The words “ Germany is indivisible ” can be read on the base of the base.

The memorial was inaugurated on the 7th anniversary of the popular uprising in the GDR on June 17, 1960 on St. Peter's Church Square in Recklinghausen. In 2011 it was extensively renovated. ( Location )

Exhibitions (selection)

In addition to participating in exhibitions of the German Association of Artists, the West German Association of Artists and the Vestische Künstlerbund, the following exhibitions were important:

Solo exhibitions (selection)

• 1966 Märkisches Museum Witten
• 1969 Galerie Krokodil, Hamburg
• 1971 Kunsthalle Recklinghausen
• 1981 Kunsthalle Recklinghausen
• 1985 Insel-Forum Marl
• 1987 Homage to Heinz Ridder, Galerie 35, Recklinghausen
• 1987 permanent exhibition in the rooms of the Stadtsparkasse Recklinghausen
• 1988 special exhibition at Kunsthalle Recklinghausen
• 1990 European Academy , Berlin
• 1991 Permanent exhibition in the AOK Recklinghausen
• 1993 retrospective, Bruno-Goller-Haus Gummersbach
• 2015 Heinz Ridder and the Vestische Künstlerbund 1955–1986, Kutscherhaus Recklinghausen
• 2015 Homage to Heinz Ridder, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen
• 2016 “Facial Landscapes”, special exhibition in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf

Participation in exhibitions (selection)

• 1947 “Young artists between Rhine and Ruhr” in Recklinghausen
• 1950 "Westphalian art of the last 50 years" in Recklinghausen
• 1958 "Art of the Ruhr Area" in Sweden
• 1960 Art Prize "young west" of the city of Recklinghausen in Recklinghausen
• 1962 "Westphalian graphics" in Hamm
• 1965 “Metamorphoses - Surrealism Today” in Leverkusen
• 1967 Large art exhibition in the Haus der Kunst in Munich
• 1979 Salon des Artistes Douaisens, Douai, France
• 1981 20th century art in Westphalia, Recklinghausen
• 1981 Westphalian artist, Westfalenpark Dortmund
• 1984 Biennale an der Ruhr, Städtische Galerie Schloss Oberhausen
• 1985 Westphalian artist, Westfalenpark Dortmund
• 1988 RK Ziekenhuis, Dordrecht / Netherlands
• 1994 "Three artists and art educators in Recklinghausen" with N. Dolezich, P. Hülsmann in the Vestisches Museum Recklinghausen
• 2000 Hennef Art Days, Meys-Fabrik, Hennef
• 2004 Hennef Art Days, Meys-Fabrik, Hennef
• 2008 "Pentimenti", - "What passes", crypt of the Benedictine Abbey Michaelsberg, Siegburg
• 2010 "Pentimenti", - "What passes away" relaunch 2010, House of the Evangelical Church, Bonn
• 2011 Salon culture, Düsseldorf
• 2016 "At the moment", art´SAP gallery, Dresden

Artistic work

Ridder's artistic work includes drawings and paintings from four decades. In the 1960s and 70s, Heinz Ridder was best known for his vegetative ink drawings, which were characterized by natural and figurative structural compositions. “He saw less of the representational, but more of the living, the branches of a tree, the mesh of Moses, the thicket of loopy plants, root and growth structures that bore all the signs of the vegetation. Becoming and growing, metamorphosis and decay. "

Thomas Grochowiak, director of the Städtische Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, emphasized the meticulousness of his handwriting in 1971 and stated at the opening of an exhibition: “When you leaf through the abundance of his drawings, you are puzzled to see how fantastic faces and figures appear here and there in the web of image structures. who more and more dominated the space in later drawings, but knew how to evade any attempt at identification. ”Grochowiak described the artistic output of Ridder's structures as strong and convincing.

Ridder himself described these variable figures as “larvae faces, sometimes of grimaceous malice, of profound sadness or grinning insolence. Phantoms with human or animal-like bodies and faces; always ready to transform. ”Heinz Ridder discovered the motifs for his pictures in the wrinkled face of the woman in front of him in the tram, in the head of the dog he stroked and while walking when the eyes of his variable figures stared at him from the tree trunks.

For his artist colleague Eberhard Fisch it was therefore only logical that Ridder turned to the most lively motif of all motifs, the human face. Heinz Ridder got the idea for his “facial landscapes” - as he himself said - while shaving in front of the highly magnifying concave mirror. Heinz Ridder: “Time and again I am fascinated by the expressiveness and the richness of the naturally created surface structures, which are based on the fact that a dynamic process takes place here in which the most varied of effective forces are involved. But nowhere are the surface shapes more interesting than in the human face. (…) Here I encounter my very own world, the inscribed codes of my life, the notched traces of experienced joys and pains. With the method of greatly enlarging sections of the face, I believe I can not only achieve a more intensive perception of the signs of reality, but at the same time also cause the object to become alienated and ramified by isolating the section, which makes its life of its own only fully visible when enlarged. "

Works of art such as “Disturbed Sight”, “Facial Torso”, “Mouth Landscape” or “Flying Eye” lead the viewer through the subject of “facial landscapes” that occupied the artist from the late 1970s until his death in 1986. It was the mountains and valleys, the tufts of hair, the wrinkles around the eyes and mouth areas of the aging human skin that offered the draftsman Heinz Ridder incentives to explore them and to reproduce them alienated, as if brought very close with a telephoto lens. The more wrinkled a face, the more “grateful” the object became for the artist. The enlarged outer form of the representation up to the dissolution of the forms leads to a new perspective on the age of humans.

Works in public space

Works by Ridder can be seen in the collections of Kunsthalle Recklinghausen , Märkisches Museum Witten , Stadtsparkasse Recklinghausen and AOK Recklinghausen.

Literature (selection)

• Economic Association of Visual Artists NRW eV: Visual artists in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Volume I: South and North Westphalia. Aurel Bongers Publishing House, Recklinghausen 1966.
• Wilhelm Nettmann in: Heinz Ridder. Märkisches Museum, Witten 1966.
• Thomas Grochowiak in: Heinz Ridder - Pictures and drawings from 25 years. Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, 1971.
• Thomas Grochowiak (Ed.) In: Kunstschätze in Recklinghausen. Verlag Aurel Bongers, Recklinghausen 1972, ISBN 3-7647-0233-8 .
• Anneliese Schröder: Westphalia - art of the 20th century. Recklinghausen municipal art gallery, 1981.
• Norbert Dolezich - Paul Hülsmann - Heinz Ridder - 3 art teachers in Recklinghausen. Museums of the City of Recklinghausen / Vestisches Museum / Stadtsparkasse Recklinghausen with contributions by Norbert Dolezich, Paul Hülsmann, Monika Wrobel, 1994, ISBN 3-929040-14-X .
• Ferdinand Ullrich in: Heinz Ridder and the Vestische Künstlerbund Recklinghausen 1955 - 1986. Dresden 2015, ISBN 978-3-00-048855-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Anne Kaminsky (ed.): Places of remembrance. Memorial signs, memorials and museums on the dictatorship in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR. 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-443-3 , p. 315.
2. ↑ Monika Wrobel in: Norbert Dolezich - Paul Hülsmann - Heinz Ridder - 3 art educators in Recklinghausen. 1994.
3. ↑ Thomas Grochowiak in: Heinz Ridder - Pictures and drawings from 25 years. Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, 1971.
4. ↑ Angela Lamza: Looking the old person in the face. Thirty years in the chair of the Vestischen Künstlerbund: Heinz Ridder presents his works. In: Recklinghäuser Zeitung. 11./12. May 1985. (report)
5. ^ Heinz Ridder: About the task of the artist and about himself. In: Heinz Ridder - pictures and drawings from 25 years. Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, 1971.
6. ↑ Eberhard Fisch, opening speech for the exhibition “Facial Landscapes”, Volksband Oer-Erkenschwick, 1982.
7. ^ Heinz Ridder in: Westphalia - Art of the 20th Century. Recklinghausen municipal art gallery, 1981.