Johann Rosenboom

Johann Rosenboom (born June 17, 1947 in Backemoor , East Friesland ) is a German painter and graphic artist .

Education and life

Johann Rosenboom grew up in Backemoor and Leer in East Frisia . After attending school and an apprenticeship from 1961, he worked as a precision mechanic and toolmaker. From 1968 to 1971 he studied at the University of Applied Sciences in Fulda and then until 1976 at the University of Fine Arts in Kassel . After his legal clerkship and the second state examination, he worked as an art teacher at a state school until 1980. Since 1981 he has been working as a freelance artist. He lives and works in Kassel and in Grizzana Morandi ( Emilia-Romagna ). Long trips and work stays as well as painting trips carried out with college friends led him to non-European countries and to the Mediterranean countries.

painting

Decisive impulses for the later artistic work of Rosenboom conveyed the interest in natural phenomena and rural culture of his northern German place of birth Backemoor , which he developed and promoted in his childhood . His graphic exploration of nature, which he began early on, opened up an increasingly differentiated and artistic view of the world of things and their appearances. For him, painting is a fascinating medium for devoting oneself to the process of perception in a sensual, contemplative and poetic manner, which has shaped his artistic work from the very beginning. He works mainly with the classic materials oil, tempera and watercolor. The picture themes result from immediate perception and are reflections of the experience of facets of the visible external and social world. Frequently recurring subjects such as landscape, figure, interior, architecture, still life, dance are Rosenboom's impetus and stimulus for a translation of the “objective” world into a painting in which light, color, composition and chance create images according to their own rules that appear detached from their external, realistic appearances and produce their own painterly qualities and atmospheres.

The art historian and former director of the Hessen Kassel Museum Landscape, Bernd Küster explained :

“In the beginning there is seeing, and this is what Johann Rosenboom's pictorial considerations are always based on, no matter how abstracted or presented with expressive energy. In everything that emerges from a very cautiously progressive painterly treatment, a fundamental dialogue in which nature participates as well as the painter himself remains recognizable. The transformations in Johann Rosenboom's work are radical, the tensions between light and shadow sometimes dissolve into two pure colors or are intensified by them, landscapes by the water are given a new colored garment, panoramas of Italian mountains appear as exotic carpets of color, in dark interiors simple things come together and glow as if illuminated from within. "

Monte Sole

Since 1981 Rosenboom has also lived and worked in Grizzana Morandi . The municipality of Grizzana, together with the neighboring towns of Monzuno and Marzabotto, forms the area of Monte Sole , known as the “Parco storico di Monte Sole” and the “Scuola di Pace”, a place of remembrance. In autumn 1944, the Waffen SS and the German Wehrmacht carried out a massacre of civilians in this area, which killed around 770 people from the surrounding communities. With this crime, also known as the Marzabotto massacre , Rosenboom has artistically dealt with drawing, painting, etching and photography since 1983. This resulted in an exhibition with photographed portraits of residents of the community, including contemporary witnesses and members of the families concerned. The attempt to depict the incomprehensible resulted - in collaboration with Claudio Cappelletti - under the title “Un segno pre Monte Sole”, an extensive total work of art made up of paintings, graphics and photographs, which was carried out in Grizzana , Bologna , Natzweiler-Struthof ( Alsace ) and 2018 was exhibited in the Bad Arolsen Museum. In 2012 the community of Grizzana Morandi awarded Johann Rosenboom honorary citizenship.

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1980 Kassel, Art Association (G)
• 1980 Kassel, New Gallery
• 1981 Kassel, Bellevue Palace
• 1982 Leer, Haneburg
• 1984 Delmenhorst, Municipal Gallery
• 1992 Wilhelmshaven, Kunsthalle
• 1993 Hann.-Münden, town hall
• 1994 Brussels, State Representation Hesse
• 1997 Stra (Veneto), Villa Pisani
• 1998 Ziegenhain, Schwalm Museum
• 1998 Udine (Friuli), Galleria d`Arte Moderna
• 1999 Berlin, European Patent Office
• 2000 Nordenham, Museum
• 2001 Göttingen, Municipal Museum
• 2002 Worpswede, Galerie Ruländer
• 2003 Bad Wildungen, spa museum
• 2004 Hann.-Münden, packing house
• 2004 Kassel, Hess. Administrative Court
• 2005 Warburg-Welda, castle
• 2006 Uster (Switzerland), Villa Grunholzer
• 2008 Willingshausen, Kunsthalle
• 2009 Imola (Italy), Salannunziata
• 2010 Leer, Leda factory
• 2011 Kassel, Kassel Architecture Center
• 2012 Kassel, district building
• 2012 Grizzana-Morandi (Italy), Fienili
• 2012 Gaggio-Montano (Bologna), Antica Osteria
• 2013 Bologna, Accademia di Belle Arti
• 2013 Loccum, Evangelical Academy
• 2013 Bologna, Biblioteca Salaborsa
• 2014 Leer, Kunsthaus
• 2015 Leer, Evenburg Castle
• 2015 Castelluccio ( Porretta Terme ), Castello
• 2016 Kassel, regional court
• 2016 Obernburg am Main , Kochsmühle
• 2017 Rastede , Palais
• 2017 Natzweiler-Struthof (Alsace), documentation center
• 2018 Gaggio Montano (Bologna), Sala Convegno
• 2018 Bad Arolsen Museum
• 2019 Bologna, Biblioteca Salaborsa (with Bill Homes, London)

literature

• Bernd Küster, A Painter of Color , Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, 1992
• Isabella Reale, Johann Rosenboom, Viaggi tra coleri e silenzi / Journeys between color and silence , Udine 1998
• Bernd Küster, On the painting by Johann Rosenboom , Kassel 1999
• Dirk Schwarze, painting that creates its own reality , Städt. Museum Göttingen, 2001
• Bernd Küster, in the beginning is seeing. On the painterly work of Johann Rosenboom, in: Marcus Angenbauer, Sinnliche Approachungen, Kassel 2004
• Dirk Schwarze, Johann Rosenboom, A Master of Light , in: 100 artists and one, Berlin / Kassel 2015, pp. 164–166
• Johann Rosenboom, in: Between Jade and Dollart , Oldenburg 2017, pp. 38–41
• Johann Rosenboom, Un segno per Monte Sole, painting, graphics, photography , Bad Arolsen 2018

Publicly owned works

• Kunsthaus Leer :
  • River, tempera on paper, 2009
  • Evenburg IV, mixed media, 2012
  • Hafen (Leer), tempera on paper, 2012

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bernd Küster, In the beginning is seeing. On the painterly work of Johann Rosenboom , in: Marcus Angenbauer, Sensual Approaches, Kassel 2004, p. 6 f.