Karlheinz Scherer

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Karlheinz Scherer (born October 8, 1929 in Lörrach ; † January 13, 2008 in Efringen-Kirchen ) was a German painter, draftsman and graphic artist. He has received numerous grants and prizes, including the Hans-Thoma State Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg (1965) and the Reinhold-Schneider Prize of the City of Freiburg im Breisgau (1982).

life and work

Scherer studied painting from 1951 to 1956 at the Art Academy in Freiburg, (today a branch of the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe ); the last two years as a master student of Adolf Strübe .

With Horst Antes , Jürgen Brodwolf , Peter Dreher and Dieter Krieg , he belonged to a group of young painters from southern Germany who succeeded in the 1960s as representatives of a new figuration . Oriented towards representational representation, they were part of that supraregional movement against the Informel that became known on the international level as Nouveau Réalisme or Pop Art .

The triumphant advance of pop art confirmed and inspired the young artist, who, despite the prominence of abstract tendencies in the post-war art scene, had always clung to figure and object: “Scherer's pictures are becoming larger and more self-confident, the colors brighter. Now he is completely with himself and in his time. ”He painted ties for the mountains, braces, pages of fat, but also poster girls, Bentley and Rolls-Royce. The result was an idiosyncratic regional interpretation of New Realism in the form of "ironic-trashy Heimat-Pop idylls". Local and personal motives mixed with media presentations of reality. In a series of overpainted and sometimes grotesque magazine photos, he countered the unsubstantiated promises of the advertising industry of beauty and happiness.

Scherer's skepticism, however, was not only about the beautiful appearance of commercial imagery. This can be seen in a group of works of ornamental-abstract pattern pictures that he began in 1972 parallel to the representational works. There, too, visual culinary art and ridicule go hand in hand. With the use of motif rollers - the wallpaper substitute of poorer times - and commercial tinting paint, he reflected the myth of artistic ingenuity and inspiration cultivated in informal painting: craft material instead of oil paints and palette and the creative act consists of a mechanical reproduction process. Scherer formulated an independent ornamental style as early as the early 1970s - before the Pattern Art Movement was formed in the USA - and long before the term became popular in Europe through the Brussels exhibition of the same name at the beginning of 1979.

Critically questioning the traditional image of the artist is a position he shares with younger postmodern colleagues. Scherer mistrusted the demands of art with the capital "K" and therefore often chose the small format or replaced oil and canvas with paper and commercially available tinting paint. That is why he did not have any reservations about design and the applied arts, an attitude that has only recently been shared by a much younger generation of artists.

Since the mid-1970s, Scherer devoted himself to painting, expanding and equipping two historic houses that he saved from decay, and also designed some furniture himself. He combined architecture, space, art and design into an overall artistic concept. His interiors have been the subject of numerous photo series in architecture magazines and magazines.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1961 Young West, Recklinghausen Art Gallery
  • 1962 Oldenburg Castle Museum, Oldenburg Art Association, with Brodwolf
  • 1967 Weg 67, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, with Antes, Hüppi, Krieg, Polke, Richter, Rückriem and others. a.
  • 1969 Kunstverein Hochrhein, Säckingen, with Brodwolf / Galerie Krohn, Badenweiler, (also 1961)
  • 1978 Liatowitsch Gallery, Basel
  • 1984 Exhibition of contemporary artists for the inauguration of Villa Schriever, (Burda KG) with Dienst, Dreher, Hauser, Hüppi, Völkle u. a.
  • 1985 Denise René Hans Mayer Gallery, Düsseldorf
  • 1990 Art Association Freiburg i. Br., (Also 1980, 1965)
  • 1993 Joseph Beuys Archive Kranenburg
  • 1995 Kunstverein Konstanz / Markgräfler Museum Müllheim (with Brodwolf)
  • 2009 Galerie Keller, Kandern, (also 2005, 2007)
  • 2010 Zeitspur, Museum Müllheim, with Bernd Völkle

Honourings and prices

  • 1954 Youth Art Prize, Baden-Baden
  • 1965 Hans Thoma State Prize from the State of Baden-Württemberg
  • 1967 Scholarship from the Aldegrever Society, Münster
  • 1974 Scholarship Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris
  • 1982 Reinhold Schneider Prize from the city of Freiburg

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. s. Margitta Brinkmann, Karlheinz Scherer, in: Zeitspur. Jürgen Brodwolf. Franz Gutmann. Karlheinz Scherer. Artur Stoll. Bernd Völkle, Freiburg 2010, pp. 28–39
  2. cf. Hans-Joachim Müller, Karlheinz Scherer, in: Karlheinz Scherer, painting 1970–1980, exhib.-cat. Art Association Freiburg i. Br., Black Monastery, Freiburg i. Br. 1980, oP
  3. ^ Angela Arnim, Kunsthaus in: The World of Interiors, November 1983, cover picture a. Pp. 120–131, photos: Fritz von der Schulenburg (reprinted in: The World of Interiors, Gilt-Edged Collection, London 1986, pp. 270–279.)