Peter Roehr

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Cardboard on wood, 20.5 × 20 cm, (1966), work No. 33-6-66, Paul Maenz Collection / Photo: Heinz Thate 10/1970

Peter Roehr (born September 1, 1944 in Lauenburg in Pomerania ; † August 15, 1968 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German painter and object artist .

Life

Roehr was born towards the end of the Second World War as the only child of the couple Kurt and Eleonora Röhr (née Zaneff). After the parents separated in 1946, the mother and her child first moved to Leipzig, then to Frankfurt am Main. After completing primary school from 1951 to 1959, Peter Roehr completed an apprenticeship as a neon advertising and sign manufacturer in Frankfurt am Main. Subsequently, he studied from 1962 to 1965 at the Art School (now University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden ) in Wiesbaden , he in 1966 as a master student in the painting class of Vincent Weber graduated. The first works in 1962 and 1963 were structural images made of rice grains on wood or square cardboard wrapped with cord (TE-17). In 1964 Roehr met Paul Maenz , a collector, patron and gallery owner who was important to him, and a friendship that lasted for several years with the Frankfurt artists Charlotte Posenenske and Thomas Bayrle .

With Paul Maenz he organized a groundbreaking exhibition in May 1967 in the Studio Galerie in the student house of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University under the title Serial Formations with works by Carl Andre , Jan Dibbets , Hans Haacke , Donald Judd , Piero Manzoni and Jan Schoonhoven, among others . In January 1968 he and Maenz opened the 60 m² shop Pudding-Explosion in Frankfurt's Holzgraben , which, according to its two owners, offered “psychedelic meals with hippie accessories”. It was the first store of its kind in Germany to offer a wide range of political, spiritual and ironic articles, from incense sticks to the Peking Rundschau.

Peter Roehr died of cancer at the age of 23.

plant

Roehr used industrially manufactured elements or printed picture motifs in a serial sequence, mostly square picture panels. Through this addition of the same motifs, which fades out any subjectivity , attention is drawn to the individual repetitive parts, to the principle of order applied, as well as to the resulting large form. The artist chose motifs in a precisely defined size and number so that a new formal unit was created. The selected materials prototypically express the stereotype of mass society : postal stickers such as express delivery or registered posting slips are just as much a part of it as are motifs from magazine advertising, book stickers, price labels, beer mats with the motif of the Henninger Tower or square school slates and round plastic lenses.

He created his typographical sequences with mechanical calculators and typewriters (addition strips ST-9, 1962) and here finds formal references to Franz Mon, who also worked in Frankfurt . In addition, photo and film montages were created . For his sound montages he had serially arranged speech contributions from German and American radio stations (excerpts from news, program announcements, advertising texts). Roehr was one of the first protagonists of Minimal Art in Germany.

When the artist died of lymphatic cancer in 1968 at the age of 23 , he left behind one of the most impressive artistic oeuvres with over 600 works. The artist's urn is kept in a serially arranged urn wall, which is located in Frankfurt's main cemetery .

The complete archive of Peter Roehr was given to the Museum of Modern Art (MMK) in Frankfurt am Main by Paul Maenz in 2011 . It contains films, notes, letters, manuscripts and the artist's estate directory. It has been completely digitized and can be viewed via an online database.

Quotes

An order, not a composition. A surface is filled with objects of the same type, one cannot distinguish them. The picture has no place of occurrence, it happens everywhere. (1965)
Invented images are, when they are thought, already invented. The realization is the second part of the creation process. (1966)

Works in public collections

Exhibitions (selection)

literature

  • Peter Roehr: Sound montages I + II . Original recordings 1966, ed. v. Frank Dommert u. Klaus Sander. Audio CD, 60 minutes, 26 tracks. supposé, Cologne 2002. ISBN 3-932513-35-5
  • Peter Roehr: 1944–1968 . Municipal Museum Schloss Morsbroich, Leverkusen 1972.
  • Peter Roehr: Exhibition catalog . With texts by Rudi H. Fuchs a. a., DuMont, Cologne 1977, ISBN 3-7701-955-4 .
  • Peter Roehr: 1968–1988. On the 20th anniversary of his death . Paul Maenz, Cologne 1988.
  • Peter Roehr , ed. v. Werner Lippert u. Paul Maenz. Edited v. Gerd de Vries. Writings on the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main 1991.
  • Charlotte Posenenske (1930–1985), Peter Roehr (1944–1968): Ein Frankfurter Raum, Museum für Moderne Kunst , Frankfurt am Main 1993. [1]
  • Art in Frankfurt. Homage to Peter Roehr; Photo montages from 1964–1966 . Rolf Lauter (Ed.), Societäts Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994.
  • Peter Roehr 1944–1968 . The Paul Maenz Collection, Vol. 2, arr. v. Gerda Wendermann. Edited by Weimar art collections. Ostfildern-Ruit 2000.
  • Peter Roehr , exhibition catalog, with texts by Martin Engler, Corinna Dirting, Jan Dibbets, Burkard Brunn, Thomas Bayrle. Museum of Modern Art and Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main 2009.
  • The repeat offender . In: Die Zeit , No. 48/2009
  • Roehr's life's work is enough for a place in the top division . In: Die Zeit , No. 48/2009

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Roehr, 1944–1968 , exhibition catalog, Städtisches Museum Leverkusen, Schloss Morsbroich, 1972, p. 72
  2. Hippie accessories: Read me, baby . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1968, p. 76 ( online ).
  3. ^ Tilman Baumgärtel: Loops. On the history and aesthetics of the loop . Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2015, p. 159-188 .
  4. ^ Online database archive Peter Roehr
  5. In Gerd de Vries: About art. Artist texts on the changed understanding of art after 1965 , DuMont, Cologne 1974