Hermann Josef Baum

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Hermann Josef Baum (born May 10, 1927 in Kerpen , Rhineland, † July 29, 2009 in Cologne ) was a German artist .

Life

Baum's talent for painting was discovered early. In addition to his training in the Kerpen city administration, which began during the turmoil of the war, the Kerpen city director at the time, Franz Schweren, made it possible for him to study at the Cologne factory schools . Further studies, u. a. at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf , followed.

After many years of work as a freelance graphic designer and various teaching assignments, HJ Baum taught media education, aesthetics, and visual and haptic communication at the Catholic University of Applied Sciences in North Rhine-Westphalia , Department Paderborn, from 1978 until his retirement in 1992 . He lived and worked in his studio apartment in Cologne until his death .

With solo exhibitions - u. a. 1961 Cologne, 1963 Brussels, 1964 The Hague, 1968 Berlin, 1969 Freiburg, 1971 Kerpen, 1973 Bonn, 1979 Stuttgart, 1981 Rheine, 1988 Brauweiler, 1987 and 1992 Kerpen, 2007 Cologne - as well as numerous participations in group exhibitions - a. a. 1984 Seoul and 1986 Rome - HJ Baum has also made a name for himself internationally. His works are represented in public and private collections.

HJ Baum felt particularly close to his native Kerpen and the Erftkreis throughout his life. The relationship developed through exhibitions, projects, acquisitions of works and art awards led to the establishment of a museum by the city of Kerpen in 1996, which gave Baum 176 works. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the donation was expanded by 50 more works in 2007. The "Museum HJ Baum" documents all of HJ Baum's creative phases and shows early monotypes and lithographs, bitumen pictures, oil and acrylic paintings, selected sculptures in steel and Cromargan as well as glass paintings .

Works

In the 1950s and 1960s, HJ Baum developed his style in which the figurative and the non-objective stand side by side by examining important currents of classical modernism such as cubism and expressionism, as well as the current tendencies in post-war art, especially the various varieties of abstract expressionism , complement and interpenetrate each other.

The expressive representational paintings of the late 1950s can be regarded as the first highlights of his painterly work. The so-called "bitumen pictures" of the 1970s bring innovations in painting technology, in which sand, stones, bitumen and paint combine to form abstract cosmic landscapes with a relief-like effect. In the 1980s, the paintings in the “Eros and Thanatos” series marked the return to representationalism with their treatment and updating of themes from Greek mythology. The later works, created since the second half of the 1990s, deal with the creative and destructive forces of nature based on Heraclitus “Everything flows”, whereby the boundaries of the representational are determined by a spontaneously and expressively acting dynamism of shapes and colors be broken again.

Parallel to this painterly work, numerous graphics (hand drawings and prints) are created in all phases, which take up these central themes, partially prepare or accompany them. Here, too, series emerged in some cases, such as the monotypes on the subject of “Aspectus Pacis” (1968).

Numerous church windows, even in Taiwan, document the work of the glass artist HJ Baum. The monumental window cycles in St. Peter, Cologne-Ehrenfeld, in Herz-Jesu, Cologne-Mülheim and in Heilig Kreuz, Bonn-Bad-Godesberg should be mentioned. Baum also designed the “Cross of Redemption” for the Protestant Academy Bad Boll from Cromargan, the monumental steel relief of Saint Rita at the Hildegardis Hospital in Cologne-Lindenthal and the Kerpen memorial for the victims of National Socialism inaugurated in 1988 by Ignatz Bubis broken Star of David.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information from the Office of the Federal President
personal data
SURNAME Baum, Hermann Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Kerpen
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 2009
Place of death Cologne