Peter Sylvester

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Peter Sylvester (born March 3, 1937 in Saalfeld , † April 4, 2007 in Leipzig ) was a German painter and graphic artist .

Life

After his primary education Peter Sylvester graduated from 1951 to 1954, a skilled worker training for Chemigrafen . From 1954 to 1957 he worked in his profession in Erfurt and Jena and until 1964 also in Leipzig, where he moved in 1958.

The first attempts at painting were made in 1955/56, not least intensified by a visit to the studio of the painter Max Ackermann in Stuttgart . In Jena, Sylvester began autodidactic studies at the University's Archaeological Institute and attended the Jena Art History Institute as a guest student. His painting training remained self-taught. In Leipzig he attended the evening academy of the College of Graphics and Book Art and began his graphic work in their workshops for lithography and etching .

Since 1964 Peter Sylvester worked as a freelancer in Leipzig . In 1967 he became a member of the Association of Visual Artists of Germany (from 1970 Association of Visual Artists of the GDR). In 1972 he and other Leipzig artists founded the Leipziger Grafikbörse as the first jury-free and thus censorship-free artists' association in the former GDR, which held annual graphic exhibitions and is still active today. On the occasion of the 15th exhibition, Peter Sylvester became its director and was its chairman from 1991 until his death after the transformation into an association.

Study trips took him to Dalmatia , Central Asia , Italy and France, among others . On a trip to France in 1981 he met Victor Vasarely in his country house in Gordes . In 1983, 1984 and 1985 he worked as a guest at the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris and in Aix-en-Provence and Morlans / Mont Ventoux ( Provence ).

In 1993 he became a member of the Association du Chemin Vert-Atelier Gravure, Paris. In 1994 he took part in the symposium “Science and Art” at the University of Leipzig. He also participated several times in the Gatersleben encounters, where scientists, writers, artists, publicists and politicians comment on philosophical questions from nature and society.

In 1974 Peter Sylvester was awarded the medal of the 5th Krakow International Graphic Biennale . In 1987 he received the Leipzig City Art Prize .

Style and subject

Graphic by Peter Sylvester on a stone slab on his grave

The graphic artist Peter Sylvester first started with classic etching, where he finally divided the surfaces into facets. Then he turned to serigraphy and developed it into perfect photomechanical printing technology. He was soon the serigraphist in the GDR.

Finally, he also initially incorporated techniques that were far removed from art into his instruments. From 1976 he used a device based on video technology and developed at the Central Institute for Isotope and Radiation Research of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR for evaluating scientific images, the densitron, in order to process, for example, flat graphics such as aquatint . In the case of flat templates, the Densitron made it possible to introduce colors and to experiment with them. That was a long time before the image processing by the personal computer . Finally he combined several of these techniques and thus came to his special artistic expression.

The focus of his work was nature. But as early as 1965 he designed the first abstract landscapes from architectural and landscape motifs. There were also similarities with the surreal landscape forms of the battered nature of the overburden fields in the brown coal opencast mines in the southern Leipzig area. But abstraction went beyond the earthly. In 1968 the first cosmic landscapes were created. More and more processes of the creation and disappearance of fantastic landscapes were included. He himself said:

“This is where my original longing to get away from familiar landscapes to worlds that seem very strange - to chaos landscapes, where everything is in an immense river, where there is something threatening, where you can still sense nature in a small corner [...] - is the still natural world or coming or past world ...? "

- Peter Sylvester : Zwischen-Raum-Welten , Berlin 1991, Ralf-Michael Seele in conversation with Peter Sylvester, quoted in Lust und Last. (see below)
His grave in the Leipziger Südfriedhof

Solo exhibitions (selection)

Factory locations

The Federal Association of Visual Artists (BBK) lists the following institutions in which works by Peter Sylvester are in public ownership:

Aalborg, KUNSTEN - Museum of modern art | Altenburg, Lindenau Museum | Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett | Dresden, Städtische Galerie Grafische Sammlung | Erfurt, Angermuseum | Leipzig, Museum of Fine Arts | Halle (Saale), Moritzburg Art Museum | Oberhausen, Ludwig Gallery Schloss Oberhausen | Paris, National Library | Prague, National Gallery | Quedlinburg, Lyonel Feininger Gallery | Rostock, Kunsthalle | Schwerin, State Museum | Warsaw, National Museum

literature

  • Ulrike Bernard, Claus Baumann, Rainer Behrends, Dieter Gleisberg: Peter Sylvester. Space-time visions - painting and graphics from four decades . Passage-Verlag, Leipzig 1999, ISBN 978-3-932900-10-5
  • Susann Hoch: Peter Sylvester , in Lust und Last - Leipzig Art since 1945 , (Eds. Herwig Guratzsch, Georg Ulrich Großmann ), Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 1997, ISBN 3-89322-907-8 , pp. 385–386
  • Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z . PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , pp. 583-584

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ site Leipzig graphics cards
  2. ↑ Gatersleben encounters ( memento of the original from April 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ipk-gatersleben.de
  3. ↑ Edwin Kratschmer at saale-galerie.de ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.saale-galerie.de
  4. ↑ Locations of Peter Sylvester's work according to BBK ( Memento of the original from February 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on April 29, 2011) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bbk-bundesverband.de
personal data
SURNAME New Year's Eve, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Saalfeld
DATE OF DEATH April 4, 2007
Place of death Leipzig