Jürgen Hans Grümmer
Jürgen Hans Grümmer (also: Hansjürgen) (born November 26, 1935 in Dellbrück , † April 1, 2008 in Cologne ) was a German sculptor and painter.
Life
Jürgen Hans Grümmer was born in Cologne-Dellbrück, his parents called him Hansjürgen. He changed this first name to Jürgen Hans in the 1970s to avoid the abbreviation "HJ". Grümmer's father had a cliché establishment. As a child, Grümmer spent part of the war years in the Losheim / Eifel area. As a painter he lived and worked both in Cologne's Südstadt, where he also had his studio, and in the Eifel near Mayen.
Grümmer studied at the Cologne factory schools from 1952 to 1958 . In 1956 he was a master student with Otto Gerster . In the same year the European mosaic (Europe on the bull) was created in the Spanish building of Cologne's town hall. In 1957 he received a scholarship from the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Rome.
Between 1958 and 1960 he was in charge of courses for art teachers in Königswinter. In 1962 Grümmer was awarded the Prize for Painting of the City of Cologne (First Friedrich Vordemberge Prize for Painting). From 1962 to 1967 he had a studio with the architect Prof. Rolf Gutbrod on the building site of the University of Cologne. In addition to helping with construction management, he designed the floors of the university library and lecture hall building, the outdoor facilities, rock gardens and Albertus-Magnus-Platz , where a traffic street (Universitätsstraße) was covered for the first time in Cologne, i.e. placed underground.
From 1964 to 1967 he conceived and designed Offenbachplatz in front of the Cologne Opera, built by Wilhelm Riphan, with the central mosaic fountain .
1970 to 1972 the renovation of Cologne's Ostermannplatz with a fountain and Kastellgäßchen in Cologne, the outdoor facilities of the then Federal Ministry of Justice and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Bonn-Bad Godesberg Nord ( Kreuzbauten ). In 1973 the sculpture garden "Polyphems Toys" was added to the then Ministry of Justice in Bonn. In the same year he took part in the exhibition "Art in Architecture" at the Ministry of Justice in Bonn.
In 1974 Grümmer designed floor areas, a photo wall and a fountain in the German Embassy in The Hague (office), the “Rosensaalburg” in the Ministry of Justice and the paviment in the Ministry of Defense in Bonn-Hardthöhe (ministerial building). Furthermore, between 1974 and 1984 he created fountains, sculptures, plaza designs in Marburg, Kassel, Wetzlar, Büdingen, Gießen (fountains and stones in the pedestrian zone), Baunatal (fountain in the military hospital), Burghof Hachenburg, Hünfeld, Bad Salzhausen, Marler Stern (shopping center ), Bad Hersfeld, City of Allendorf, Gummersbach, Petersberg / Fulda, London (terrace sculptures at the Goethe-Institut , the sculpture ensemble "The Half Arch of Doubt", which has been set up on the grounds of the Foreign Ministry in Bonn since 2015).
After retiring from the square and town design, he concentrated on painting with the exception of the design of the Barbara legend , a cycle of six facade mosaics (each 3 m × 3 m) for the Kamp-Lintfort miners' settlement .
In the nineties, Grümmer worked on a series of large-format drawings (70 cm × 100 cm) "Edith Stein", "Abacus", "Letters and Sentences" and created a triptych (320 cm × 290 cm) that was on loan in the Cologne chapter hall "Chartreuse", Kartäuserkirche depends.
In 2004 he returned to the public with "Luur ens", a joint exhibition with Joachim Rieger, from which he had withdrawn for more than twenty years, and in the last years of his life created a late work with many important works, for example "Job. A triptych plus one ", which has already been issued several times posthumously.
The painter and sculptor died on April 1, 2008 in Cologne.
plant
Grümmer appeared primarily as a sculptor with plaza designs and fountains for modern building art and the design of inner-city living spaces. In Cologne he created the opera fountain in front of the opera (Offenbachplatz) and the wall mosaic (Europe on the bull) in the Spanish building of the town hall.
The early floor, wall and facade designs, such as the one on the Cologne university campus between the main building, Philosophikum and lecture hall building (in collaboration with the Stuttgart architect Rolf Gutbrod) and that of Offenbachplatz, which was realized at the same time with its mosaic fountain in front of the opera, show these sculptural design elements which became Grümmer's trademarks at home and abroad until the 1980s: the combination of a wide variety of materials and elements. Works of art that should be accessible and occupied, climbed on and splashed around in order to create a space that can be experienced sensually in the midst of urbanity.
In addition to his work as a sculptor and "open space designer", as he laconically described himself, Grümmer created an extensive body of work on a wide variety of topics as a painter from the late 1950s until his death. His painterly work includes canvas as well as oil work on wood and the like. a., collages, drawings, etchings, screen prints, letterpress prints and much more. In his numerous sketch pads, Sudel books, on time slips and diaries, the development process of the artist can be traced in the examination of his work.
In 2010, the first posthumous retrospective at the Cologne Kunsthaus Rhenania showed works by the Cologne painter from five decades. At the same time, the Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Landscape Protection presented Grümmer's Cologne Opera Fountain on Offenbachplatz as Monument of the Month.
In 2011 the Cologne Chocolate Museum supported a chocolate donation campaign to save the Cologne Opera Fountain with the special exhibition "The Cologne artist Jürgen Hans Grümmer. Chocolate fountain meets opera fountain". At the same time there were further exhibitions with the painter's work in the Smend Gallery in Cologne, in the St. Severinskirche in Cologne and the Carthusian Church in Cologne.
The diptych “Good Friday in Severinstrasse” (1990), a key work by Grümmer , has been in St. Severin (Cologne) since February 2014 . Johannes Quirl, pastor of St. Severin, wrote about the diptych: “The word 'Kar' comes from the ahd. 'Kara' and means something like worry, sorrow. Grümmer not only experienced the grief and worries that the devastating Second World War brought with it as a child (partly in the Eifel), but also linked it back biblically, as in the work before us, and in our ›Veedel ‹Updated into it.” Grümmer lived for many decades in Cologne's Severinsviertel between St. Severin and Kartäuserkirche , where there is another important late work by the painter “The Holy Family” (triptych, 1988 to 1990). The two works are examples of the profound visual and symbolic language with which Grümmer puts numerous historical and contemporary topics in a biblical context in a knowledgeable and eloquent way. The painter invites the viewer again and again on voyages of discovery - as in so-called hidden objects - and leads him to those abysses and new beginnings that people in the Christian West as well as in the Jewish and Muslim East in their two thousand year history after the birth of Christ were always exposed.
In July 2016, after several years of restoration work, some areas of Cologne's Offenbachplatz were opened to the public again and the Cologne Opera Fountain was put into operation in a first test run.
literature
Jürgen Hans Grümmer. Painter and Sculptor [on the occasion of the first posthumous exhibition at the Kunsthaus Rhenania in Cologne from October 2, 2010 to October 17, 2010] ed. by Judith Grümmer. With contributions by Jürgen Becker , Conny Czymoch , Diter Frowein-Lyasso, Thomas Hackenberg , Christopher Schroer and Jo Schulte-Frohlinde. THE NEW OBJECTIVE , Lindlar 2010. ISBN 978-3-942139-09-0 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ - Slideshow mainly with photos of basalt spinning top and Polyphems toys on the site of the Kreuzbauten
- ↑ - Kölnische Rundschau on July 26, 2016 , accessed on July 28, 2016.
- ↑ - Media coverage on the Cologne Opernbrunnen website , accessed on July 28, 2016.
Web links
- Homepage of the artist
- dradio.de, Deutschlandfunk, Das Feature , June 1, 2012, Judith Grümmer: My father, the painter ; Manuscript of this broadcast, 141KB (June 2, 2012)
- "Good Friday on Severinstrasse" on the website of the parish of Sankt Severin
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Grümmer, Jürgen Hans |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Grümmer, Hansjürgen |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German sculptor and painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 26, 1935 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cologne |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 1, 2008 |
| Place of death | Cologne |