Pierre Kroeger

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Pierre Kröger (born September 23, 1938 in Darmstadt ) is a German painter and graphic artist .

Pierre Kröger grew up in Darmstadt and lived through the war years there. After the city was destroyed on September 11, 1944, he, his mother Marianne and the two siblings Christel and Klaus fled to Erfurt. The father did not survive the Darmstadt fire night . After school and returning to Darmstadt, Pierre Kröger began an apprenticeship as a building fitter, which he completed in 1957. Then he studied from 1957 to 1961 at the Werkkunstschule Darmstadt commercial graphics with Helmut Lortzand Fritz Fischer-Nosbisch. After nine semesters, he passed the state examination with distinction. Pierre Kröger has been a member of the Darmstadt Secession since 1968. Since 1965 he has undertaken study and long-distance trips through Europe, North Africa, Southeast Asia, South America and the USA. Numerous works are created during his travels. Today they are in well-known private collections and in public ownership. In 1981, Pierre Kröger received the City of Darmstadt Art Prize , and in 1984 the International Senefelder Prize for Lithography. In 1986, Pierre Kröger met the Italian painter Emilio Vedova .

Emilio Vedova (left) on August 4, 1986 in Darmstadt with Pierre Kröger

life and work

During the war and after the war, Pierre Kröger experienced the school as “authoritarian” and “compulsive”. For this period, the painter describes the early death of his father as particularly costly ("he was very missing, especially when he was at school"). After these "horrific experiences", Pierre Kröger perceived the time at the Werkkunstschule in Darmstadt as a personal new beginning. He attributes this experience to the teaching of his early patron Helmut Lortz . His casual manner and his childlike joy, which he expressed in the specialist class when he did successful work, were for him both a “stimulus” and a “boost” (ibid.). Another important companion and friend for Pierre Kröger was the Darmstadt painter and art prize winner Peter Steinforth . Both lived in the immediate vicinity for many years. Steinforth, born in 1923, was a valued discussion partner for Kröger. His experience and his ability to understand art intellectually inspired Kröger in the further development of his own painting.

Pierre Kröger financed his career as a freelance artist until 1968 with the proceeds from commercial graphics. Only after giving up this "purpose-related artistic work" did he venture into painting and gradually opened up the stricter graphic style. From here, Pierre Kröger moved on to become a "master of the watercolor" and yet is also committed to other techniques.

Pierre Kröger, Cyclades Harbor 1966, watercolor, 49 × 71 cm (private collection)

Even in school he knew how to draw impressively, and in the early years of his art school he created graphics, gouaches and his first oil paintings.

Pierre Kröger, Fisherman on the beach of Nazaré, 2013, oil on canvas, 130 × 195 cm

Ekkehard Mai, former director of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne, examined the “birth of art from the spirit of the watercolor” as an author in Kröger's monograph “Aquarelle” in 1990. He argues that all of the techniques practiced by Pierre Kröger ultimately grew out of a virtuoso ability to work with watercolor painting. Roland Held says that you can follow the changing characteristics of the watercolor, from the “graphically oriented, rainbow-colored leaves” that attracted attention from the time before 1970 to the more mature styles of the seventies and eighties. These, in turn, are characterized by an autonomy of color "which - now without linear aids - produces figures in floating spatiality that are moved entirely by its own means".

In 1981, Pierre Kröger was awarded the Darmstadt City Art Prize. The justification for the award by the magistrate states that “the vehement performance of the early work” is followed by an era “in which a strong reduction in color and an equally strong reduction in the object” can be observed. For Roland Held, this further development shows itself in an increasingly “greater scope”, a “spontaneity of the hand” and a “randomness of the material”. An overall significant development that put a stop to “the lure of a virtuosity that could have ended in a favor”. Pierre Kröger also worked on the further development of his technical repertoire and received an award for it. In 1984 he received the International Senefelder Prize for Lithography in Offenbach.

Today, Pierre Kröger is regarded as a modern, lyrical-expressive painter who - like the picture Fischer on the beach of Nazaré - knows how to blur "the boundaries between contemporary observation and the feeling of memory and mythological meaning". Current painting is described as a “nuanced play of colors” that is dedicated to an important parameter of art theory, aesthetics. It contained the “entire repertoire of painterly varieties” that artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Ludwig Kirchner and James Ensor first introduced to painting in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century.

Private life

In 1967 Pierre Kröger and Rosa-Maria Kröger-Hofrichter married. In 1968 their son Robin was born. The marriage ended in divorce in 1973. In 1988, Pierre and Heidi Kröger married. Heidi Kröger died in 2001. Today, Pierre Kröger is married to Barbara Kröger-Friedenstab. The couple lives in Darmstadt.

Receptions

  • “It's about feelings, not an intellectual concept. It's about the physical basis of our life, the infinite circulation of desire on the one hand, the fact of vulnerability and death on the other. " Jürgen Kisters (Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger)
  • "Every time I (...) - after a long period - meet again ( with Pierre Kröger - author's note), then within a very short time you are cast under a spell again, you are transformed. One is enthusiastic, listens to the sensual and extremely vitally conveyed adventures of the most recent journeys and experiences and is carried away by a stream of images that stand for unbridled life. They are images of a powerful, colorful and intense yield through impressions of landscapes, people, near and distant life, which are plump, stimulating and life-enhancing in a truly artistic condensation not only to be heard, but above all to come before your eyes. ” Ekkehard Mai ( former director Wallraf-Richartz-Museum Cologne)
  • “Artistic sensitivity, dream and keen awareness enter into exactly the marriage that defines an artist. Pierre Kröger is the high-quality guarantee that in the age of pseudo, chatter, packaging, tear-off, trace, photo and so-called art, the human need for the production and appropriation of highly stressed works is still present will definitely stay. ” Rudolf Krämer-Badoni (art critic).
  • “That's the whole Kröger: this irrepressible vitality that pervades the work. It is also related to his absolute desire for freedom. Everything stays loose, oil painting, gouache, watercolor, drawing. The impulsiveness is so strong that it is communicated to the viewer. This lightness through all the techniques is the fruit of constant drawing, a passion that already gripped the insubordinate pupil and which continues to this day via nude drawing at the Darmstadt Werkkunstschule. " Robert d'Hooghe (art critic).
  • “Intoxication and rhythm in Pierre Kröger's drawings. Pierre Kröger's work is the legacy of an unprecedented turmoil of creative emotions, an ecstatic, intoxicating release in which the pleasure of looking is suddenly transformed into the pleasure of creating. " Klaus Wolbert (art historian)

Awards

  • In 1981 Pierre Kröger received the Darmstadt City Art Prize
  • In 1984 Pierre Kröger received the International Senefelder Prize for Lithography

Publications

  • Pierre Kröger: watercolors. Publisher: Edition Braus, Heidelberg, 1990 ( ISBN 3-925835-53-9 )
  • Pierre Kröger: Pastels & Drawings. Publisher: Edition Braus, Heidelberg, 1992 ( ISBN 3-89466-044-9 )
  • Pierre Kröger, Klaus Wolbert: Pierre Kröger. Paintings, watercolors, gouaches, pastels, drawings, prints. Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, January 8 - February 8, 1987. Roetherdruck, Darmstadt 1987

Solo exhibitions

Numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany, Europe, Africa, North and South America. Galleries in Bonn, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Cologne, Munich, Berlin, Hanover, Düsseldorf, Bad Godesberg, Frankfurt / Main, Zurich, Vienna, São Paulo

Private collections

Numerous works are in well-known private collections

Public collections

  • Municipal Art Museum, Bonn
  • Ministry of Culture, Wiesbaden
  • City Collections, Darmstadt
  • Hess. State Museum, Darmstadt
  • Hess. State Archives, Wiesbaden
  • HEAG, Darmstadt
  • Graph. Albertina Collection, Vienna
  • Bauverein AG, Darmstadt
  • University, Darmstadt
  • Collection Museum Ludwig, Cologne
  • German School, Paris
  • Museum of Modern Art, New York

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans-Joachim Müller: Butzbach artist interviews. Hessian contributions to German literature. Eduard Roether Verlag, Darmstadt 1981, p. 170 (162-171).
  2. ↑ Pierre Kröger, Peter Steinforth: "The painter Peter Steinforth speaks with the painter Pierre Kröger". In: Pierre Kröger. Kunsthalle Darmstadt, January 17th - February 21, 1982 / Kunstverein Darmstadt eV, Darmstadt 1982. With reference to: From Culture and Leisure No. 4, October 1979
  3. ^ "Spun leaves: Pierre Kröger - exhibition in Darmstadt". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (evh) from January 20, 1987.
  4. ↑ Ekkehard Mai in: Pierre Kröger: Aquarelle. Monograph, Edition Braus, Heidelberg 1990.
  5. ↑ Ekkehard Mai (ibid.)
  6. ↑ Roland Held: "The watercolors of Pierre Kröger - To a monograph". In: Darmstädter Echo, July 7, 1990.
  7. ^ Art prize for Pierre Kröger - Magistrat honors the Darmstadt painter. In: Darmstädter Echo, January 15, 1982, p. 5.
  8. ↑ Roland Held (ibid.)
  9. ↑ Horst Hartmann: "The world in its original bloody state". In: Mannheimer Morgen, Feuilleton, January 9, 1987.
  10. ↑ Jürgen Kisters: "When a person loses himself". In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, June 17, 2014.
  11. ↑ Bernd Krimmel: “Phantasmagoria of Colors. The imagination of the world in the watercolors by Pierre Kröger ”. Speech at the opening of the exhibition for his 70th birthday at the Kunsthaus Poorhosaini on September 14, 2008. In: Pierre Kröger. Painting. Catalog for the exhibition Galerie Forum Lindenthal, Cologne.
  12. ↑ Jürgen Kisters (ibid.)
  13. ↑ Jürgen Kisters (ibid.)
  14. ↑ Ekkehard Mai (ibid.)
  15. ^ Rudolf Krämer-Badoni: Pierre Kröger - Exhibition Kunsthalle 1982. In: Die Welt, January 18, 1982
  16. ^ Robert d'Hooghe in: Pierre Kröger. Kunsthalle Darmstadt, January 17th - February 21, 1982 / Kunstverein Darmstadt eV Darmstadt 1982. Internet source : DNB 820391697
  17. ↑ Klaus Wolbert: "Intoxication and rhythm in Pierre Kröger's drawings". In: Catalog Art Prize of the City of Darmstadt 1981. Darmstadt 1981
personal data
SURNAME Kroger, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt