Peter Royen

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Peter Royen (born May 28, 1923 in Amsterdam , Netherlands; † June 18, 2013 in Düsseldorf ) was a Dutch painter , graphic artist and sculptor .

Life

Royen came to Düsseldorf from Amsterdam in 1946 to study with his artistic role model Otto Pankok , who was appointed professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in the same year . For a Dutchman so shortly after the end of the Second World War it was an unheard-of decision to want to live and work in Germany, but admiration for Pankok, which was banned from his profession during National Socialism, made him take this step.

At the Düsseldorf Art Academy, Peter Royen met Günter Grass , who was then studying sculpture and who would later be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature . Friendships with other well-known authors such as Heinrich Böll and Peter Handke followed in the years that followed. Royen was close friends with the painter Karl Schwesig . This introduced him to the Rhenish Secession in 1949 and brought him together with the Düsseldorf intellectual scene, for example with Wolfgang Langhoff , the first director of the Düsseldorf theater after the war .

The meeting with the sculptor and painter Shinkichi Tajiri was groundbreaking in two ways . On the one hand, he brought Royen into contact with museum directors in the Netherlands, which resulted in initial purchases by public collections. On the other hand, this help from Tajiri led to a lifelong interest in social and cultural-political work.

From 1948 Peter Royen worked in various committees and associations, such as the Federal Association of Visual Artists, the Düsseldorf artists' association "Malkasten" and Group 53 . Over the years he has become a committed and energetic supporter of young artists and passionately represented issues relevant to artists, such as affordable studio space and artist funding, to politics and society.

As an honor for his outstanding artistic work and his lifelong commitment to artists, his works were presented in the Great Art Exhibition NRW Düsseldorf 2013 . As part of this exhibition, he was awarded the “Art Prize of Artists”.

Peter Royen was, in addition to many other honors in the course of his life, the recipient of the Federal Cross of Merit.

His works can now be found in many important public and private collections, such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the art collection of Queen Beatrix.

Peter Royen passed away on June 18, 2013, shortly after his 90th birthday.

plant

At the beginning of his career, Peter Royen's woodcuts were largely borrowed from the representational world of his teacher Otto Pankok. At the same time, however, he began to explore abstraction and the creative possibilities of color with his painting.

A lifelong characteristic of his works are recurring variations of his “favorite non-color” white. He processed this by means of layers, contrasted it with other colors, and structured and perforated its surface in a variety of ways.

When asked how he felt when he first painted in white this way, Royen said: “I was surprised, surprised by the effect. And that's where I stayed. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katharina Oesterreicher: Peter Royen , in exhibition catalog for the 80th birthday of Peter Royen , Marcel Hartung (ed.), Künstlerverein Malkasten , 2003
personal data
SURNAME Royen, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch painter, graphic artist and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam , Netherlands
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 2013
Place of death Dusseldorf