Lissy Winterhoff

Lissy Winterhoff (2014)

Lissy Winterhoff (born July 20, 1953 in Schwelm ) is a German artist and theater scholar .

In her artistic work she mainly works with techniques of photography , photo etching and photoplasty .

In theater studies she worked through Salome as a femme fatale on the stage at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Live and act

Winterhoff studied photography with Arno Jansen and free graphics with Pravoslav Sovák at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences from 1974 to 1984 . She was appointed master class student with Pravoslav Sovák, the final exam was 1981, the master class exam 1984. Winterhoff received from 1981 to 1983 a teaching position for video and movement improvisation at the University of Art and Design Cologne.

From 1981 to 1989 she studied at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Cologne, theater, film and television studies, art history, philosophy with a master's degree with Renate Möhrmann .

Winterhoff works in a free studio in Cologne with a focus on photography and photoplasty. For her work, she uses unusual image carriers, such as hand-made handmade paper or watercolor paper that has been sensitized to light, which she processes in the photo laboratory using the techniques of classic photography. These photoplastic works are created through the interaction of the concept, the sensual structure of the material and the image.

plant

Winterhoff created an extensive body of photoplastic works. The majority of these are black-and-white photographs that were taken in connection with various artistic techniques as photographs in the darkroom . Color is created in her work through overpainting, coloring or through the carrier materials used.

The early works from the mid-1970s onwards are black and white photographs that were hand-colored with subtle, transparent oil paints.

Winterhoff's works from the 80s establish a connection between the art categories of movement improvisation, video work, photography and etching. They were mostly realized as photo etchings .

From the early 1990s onwards, Winterhoff increasingly turned to photographic work on unusual media. This is how he created works on handmade paper , watercolor paper, sand on wood and canvas. The works were partly realized as screen prints . Winterhoff often worked literary texts into the work.

The inclusion of local natural material as an element of the artistic photographic work was realized in the series on Egyptian desert landscapes that she created in the early 2000s. These are photographs on the original sand of these landscapes on wooden supports. The representations of these desert landscapes appear on the original sand material from the desert itself.

Winterhoff repeatedly worked on political topics such as child labor, equal rights for women, persecution and the Shoah . In these works she combined historical photographs and journalistic texts with her photographic media and realized the resulting works as screen prints.

Winterhoff has found the photogram as a means of expression since 2013 . In the series Gabriele Münter - The Houses of My Friends , based on Gabriele Münter's wood and linocuts , she realized a new concept of artistic design with natural materials on light-sensitive handmade paper using the photogram technique. In the extensive photogram cycle Die Vier Jahreszeiten she puts the inexhaustibility and vitality of nature at the center of the presentation. At the same time, these works draw on the plant representations of the origins of the photogram technique in the 19th century.

Reception and background

The art historian and specialist photography author Reinhold Mißelbeck described the work of Lissy Winterhoff as follows:

“Lissy Winterhoff's photographic work is thematically broad and at the same time self-contained in a fascinating way. Her choice of topics does not follow a rational calculation or a previously established system, but happens spontaneously, based on the encounter with the object, as soon as something is emotionally triggered in her. All of her pictures, whether they are landscapes, still lifes, flowers, Maltese temples or even a photographic examination of literature, have in common that feelings play a dominant role in dealing with the subject. "

“Nature, be it landscape, blossom or still life with fruit, is their real theme, into which humans and the architecture they create fit. With her, the loving gaze is ultimately also the gaze directed towards harmony, which is feminine, insofar as it does not see the opposite in nature, with which one has to deal, with which one has to fight, but the lap in which one can be safe . "

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1982: "Works on paper from the Rhine Valley", Pratt-Graphic-Center, New York (G)
• 1987/1988: "Lissy Winterhoff graphic works 1981–1987", Kölnischer Kunstverein (E)
• 1991: "Of penguins, castles and temples", photo gallery in focus, Cologne (E)
• 1992: "Cologne Photo Artists", Rhineland Regional Council (G)
• 1995: "Egypt - Near Easter Island", photo gallery in focus, Cologne (E)
• 1995: "Six years of comparisons with the Fatherland", Brandenburg Cathedral / Johanneskirche Düsseldorf (G)
• 1996: "11. German International Graphic Triennial ", Frechen (G)
• 1998: "The combinations of the possible result in a rich tension - photoplastic works by eight artists", Dresdner Bank, Cologne (G)
• 1999 “Unity - Women Artists in Dialogue”, Cologne / Brandenburg, BBK, Cologne
  • 2000: Wash house, Potsdam (G)
• 2001: "Photographs on extraordinary picture carriers", town house Erftstadt (E)
• 2001: Exhibition for the Gabriele Münter Prize , Women's Museum, Bonn (G)
  • 2002: Exhibition Hall Leipzig
• 2001: "Perplex - Positions and Perspectives", Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn (G)
• 2002: "I threw myself on my knees in front of the beauty of a rose", Historic Town Hall, Cologne (E)
• 2004: "Trois manières de vue", Chapelle de Penitents Blancs, St. Martin-de-Castillon , France (G)
• 2006: "The Palace of the Dragon Queen", fairy tale projects Galerie Claudia Delank, Cologne (G)
• 2007: "Savor the moment", Galerie Pia Esch-Renner, Frechen (E)
• 2011: "Face Show", Käthe Kollwitz Museum, Cologne (G)
• 2013: Art fair, Cologne (G)
• 2014: Cologne Paper Art (G)
• 2015: "Homage to Gabriele Münter", Women's Museum Bonn (G)

Publications

• Lissy Winterhoff photographs. Self-published, 1994.
• Their splendor must be an abyss, their lusts an ocean. The Jewish Princess Salome on the stage at the turn of the century. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1998, ISBN 978-3-8260-1433-8 .

Web links

Commons : Lissy Winterhoff  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Lissy Winterhoff in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website from Lissy Winterhoff

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lissy Winterhoff: Their splendor must be an abyss, their lusts an ocean. The Jewish Princess Salome on the stage at the turn of the century. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1998, ISBN 978-3-8260-1433-8 .
2. ↑ The Cologne Werkschulen were transferred as the art and design department to the Cologne University of Applied Sciences, which was newly founded in 1971 (renamed to TH Köln since September 2015 ).
3. ↑ Master's thesis at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Cologne WS 1988/89: Salome as femme fatale on the stage at the turn of the century . The work contains reproductions of four photo etchings by Lissy Winterhoff.
4. ↑ The Kölnischer Kunstverein selected works from the Artes Gude cycle from 1979 as the annual edition for 1980.
5. ↑ The self- productions ravah from 1981 and Salome from 1987 should be mentioned as examples , which were realized as a series of photo etchings (cf. the self-productions by Cindy Sherman ). The photo etching cycle Salome arose from a movement improvisation on the subject of Salome. The underlying video work was transferred photographically and realized as a photo etching. Part of the Salome series appeared in Lissy Winterhoff: Their splendor must be an abyss, their lusts an ocean. The Jewish Princess Salome on the stage at the turn of the century. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1998, ISBN 978-3-8260-1433-8 .
6. ↑ Examples are cycles on or with texts by George Sand , Vita Sackville-West , Naval el Saadavi, Rose Ausländer , Virginia Woolf , Jenny s'Héricourt, Madame de Sévigné , Gustave Flaubert and Federico García Lorca and Eugen Drewermann .
7. ↑ The photoplastic works of the series Wadi Abd El Melik and Wadi Surah (both from 2001) can serve as examples .
8. ↑ In this context the picture cycles of photoplastic works on Oradour-sur-Glane , Auschwitz-Birkenau , the Titz-Rödingen state synagogue and the cycle Pictures without Words should be mentioned .
9. ↑ Part of the cycle Pictures without Words was shown in 2011 in the exhibition Face Show in the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Cologne.
10. ↑ Represented by Mathew Carey Lea from 1841 Photogenic Drawings of Plants and Anna Atkins 1843 Cyanotypes of plants, ferns and feathers, quoted from photograms.
11. ↑ Reinhold Mißelbeck is a specialist author of a number of works on photography, e. E.g. photography of the 20th century. Cologne 2001, Taschen-Verlag, ISBN 3-8228-5513-8 .
12. ↑ Reinhold Misselbeck Lissy Winterhoff - The loving look. Preface to Lissy Winterhoff: Lissy Winterhoff photographs. Selbstverlag, 1994, pp. 3-5.
13. ↑ The exhibition took place as a parallel exhibition of the Kölnischer Kunstverein to the exhibition of the Graham Nash Collection in 1987 in Cologne.
14. ↑ Juried Exhibition of the German International Exhibition of Graphic Art Frechen, catalog p 155 - Lissy Winterhoff 362, Look! I have entered the Westland , photo etching.