Oskar Koller

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Oskar Koller (born October 16, 1925 in Erlangen ; † May 17, 2004 in Fürth ) was a German painter and graphic artist .

Life

Oskar Koller was born in Erlangen in 1925. His mother came from Kallmünz in Upper Palatinate . After completing a commercial apprenticeship, Koller attended what was then the vocational school (now FH for Design ) in Nuremberg from 1947 . He was instructed in color theory and drawing. After some study trips u. a. in Italy , Austria and France he married his wife Jolande in 1954. Until 1959 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg , where he was Hermann Wilhelm's master student . He returned to the academy in 1985/1986 as a visiting professor. In 1957 Koller received a scholarship from the DAAD Bonn in Paris . At that time, Paris was the center of contemporary Western art. It was there that the first confrontation with abstract tendencies occurred and he began to paint his first abstract pictures.

Oskar Koller: “Over time I found my own handwriting. I realized that the more precisely and clearly I used my creative means, the stronger my pictures became. Nevertheless, every new picture for me is a challenge for artistic development. For me this was a path in small steps. The more I mastered the means of painting, the more freely and boldly I was able to express myself, which not least makes the fruits of old age visible. "

The watercolors in particular made him famous beyond his homeland. In this technique he was able to show his great strength, the seemingly effortless handling of the color, particularly well. He used the blobs and splashes very sensitively and sparingly, always trying not to narrow the viewer's imagination too much. His favorite subjects were landscapes, flowers, trees and especially people.

Koller has been working as a freelance artist since 1959, and numerous solo exhibitions at home and abroad have consolidated his international reputation. His work has often been recognized with awards and prizes. Many book publications, calendars and TV reports have made him known to a wide public. In Nuremberg he was a member of the artist group “ Der Kreis ” with access to the “Kreisgalerie” opposite the Germanic National Museum.

In 2002 he set up a foundation to ensure that his life's work “is preserved and remains accessible to the public”. He handed over almost 3,000 pictures to the foundation.

Posthumous exhibitions took place in the Kunsthaus Nürnberg in 2004, in 2005 in the Museum of Modern Art in Skopje / Macedonia, in the Kunst Galerie Fürth and on the island of Mainau in Lake Constance.

Retrospective for the 80th birthday in the art gallery fürth

From September 9th to October 23rd, 2005, the municipal art gallery Fürth presented a retrospective with 47 works on the subjects of trees, people (especially on the subject of dance) and house / cubic architecture, the latter in collage technology. These three topics were particularly close to Oskar Koller's life. As early as 1976 he put it: “The joy of painting made me a painter. I felt the air, saw the trees, the people, the houses. I practiced on their shapes. ”He liked to emphasize the analogy between trees / tree trunks and figures or people. The sometimes cheerful baroque tree pictures in acrylic on canvas or on aluminum plate were juxtaposed with those in acrylic on paper in black and white, including leaves from the very last creative period, January 2004. The exhibition should make a contribution to seeing Oskar Koller not only as a flower painter , but in the versatility that was his own. The high point for connoisseurs was an exquisite selection of collages from different decades, some of which have been driven to the point of complete abstraction.

Commemorative exhibition for the 80th birthday on the island of Mainau

From September 23 to October 30, 2005, the European Cultural Forum Mainau eV, in collaboration with the Koller family and the Springmann Gallery, Freiburg, presented a selection of the most beautiful watercolors from Oskar Koller's estate in Mainau Castle. Especially for the occasion of this exhibition, Prestel-Verlag published the book "Oskar Koller - The Watercolorist" about the person Oskar Koller and his work. The editor was Herbert Koller , son of Oskar Koller, himself an artist and former master student of Günther Uecker .

Awards

Works in public collections

literature

  • Birgit Jooss : Oskar Koller. The artist's passport with numerous official notices. In: Anzeiger des Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Edited by G. Ulrich Großmann, Nürnberg 2011, pp. 297–299.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography at the Rathausgalerie Gerti Willmes  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.rathausgalerie.de  
  2. ↑ Source is missing!
personal data
SURNAME Koller, Oskar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH gain
DATE OF DEATH May 17, 2004
Place of death Fuerth