Horst Kerstan

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Horst Kerstan (born March 29, 1941 in Frankfurt am Main ; † March 21, 2005 in Kandern ) was a German ceramist , artisan and internationally recognized artist .

Life

Horst Kerstan grew up in Frankfurt am Main, where he got to know the manufacture of ceramic products through his father Walter Kerstan, who headed the “Ceramic Colors” department at Farbwerke Hoechst AG . After an apprenticeship in porcelain painting , he first worked as a porcelain painter in the porcelain factory of Hoechst AG from 1956 to 1957 , and then from 1957 to 1959 in the ceramics department of the Offenbach Art School (today: Offenbach am Main University of Design ) with Lore Kramer-Koehn, the wife of Frankfurt architect Ferdinand Kramer , learning to pottery and drawing at the University of Fine Arts, Frankfurt. After Kerstan got to know the ceramicist and painter Richard Bampi at the Frankfurt trade fair in 1958 and came to appreciate his work, he became his apprentice and student. After his apprenticeship in pottery from 1959 to 1962 in Kandern, the journeyman's examination in Stuttgart and working as a journeyman for a year in an Italian ceramics factory, Kerstan returned to Kandern to become a master student of Richard Bampi in 1963. After the death of his master in 1965, Kerstan took over and acquired his workshop and property and started his own business there in 1967 after completing his master's examination. In 1971 he became a member of the Academie International de la Céramique in Geneva and founded the "Group 83" of well-known German ceramists. Like Richard Bampi, Horst Kerstan also supported numerous young ceramists as pupils, interns or apprentices, etc. a. Jan Kollwitz and Uwe Loellmann , on their way to creative independence. In his first marriage, Horst Kerstan was married to Waltraud Kerstan (née Liebeneiner) from 1966 to 1986 and his second marriage to the ceramist Beate Sturm-Kerstan, who continues his pottery workshop in Kandern, from 1989 to 2005.

plant

In his ceramic-artistic work, Kerstan was inspired by the variety of organic natural forms (African fruits such as pumpkins), conventional ceramics of everyday use, ritual Asian ceramics, modern painting and artists such as Miro, Hans Arp or Picasso. At first he worked with Horst Antes and Otmar Alt , later with Bernd Völkle and Emil Schumacher . His great curiosity, his creative talent and craftsmanship, his diverse creative means, glazing and firing techniques resulted in a unique, unmistakable work. Since Kerstan, like his teacher Bampi, was deeply impressed by the Far Eastern ceramic art throughout his life, he visited important masters of the pottery in Japan, Korea and China every year from 1970 to study their practical knowledge and craftsmanship. With the experience and technical knowledge he gained there, in 1977 Kerstan was the first European to build an anagama wood-burning stove for ash in his garden next to his workshop , which he replaced in 1989 with a more powerful, new stove.

In these five-meter-long wood-burning tunnel kilns, he has since burned his workpieces made of irregular shapes in a pine wood fire at temperatures of up to 1350 degrees for seven days, the natural glazes of which were created from ash in the play of flames and which made him internationally known. Since 1993 he has been making crockery for the traditional Japanese tea ceremony ( raku ) and since 1994 figural sculptures as well as small series of crockery.

His work, which has been exhibited many times, is in private and public collections. In 2015 the Freiburg museums presented the exhibition "Horst Kerstan Ceramics of Modernism" in the Augustinian monastery and honored him as one of the most important ceramists in Germany.

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions:

Group exhibitions:

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Municipal museums: Horst Kerstan. Retrieved February 19, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Schloss Gottorf is reminiscent of Group 83. ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.schloss-gottorf.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Gottorf Castle , 2013.
  3. ↑ "German Ceramists - Group 83". Past present. Group 83, 2016.
  4. ↑ http://www.keramikfreunde-keramos.de/bampi-preis.cfm. Retrieved February 19, 2017 .
  5. ^ State Prize for Design, Art and Craft . ( baden-wuerttemberg.de [accessed February 19, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Kerstan, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ceramist
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 2005
Place of death Kandern