Rainer Bonar

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Rainer Bonar (born Lietzke; born February 29, 1956 in Berlin-Lichtenberg ; † November 25, 1996 in Berlin-Reinickendorf ) was a German painter , graphic artist and photographer . In 1981 he moved from East to West Berlin. On November 25, 1996, Rainer Bonar committed suicide; he left three children and a wife.

Life

Rainer Bonar was born in 1956 as the son of Helga and Heinz Lietzke in East Berlin (GDR). Following the polytechnic high school, he completed a skilled worker training as a lettering and poster painter by 1974 and then worked in the Berlin book trade company.

Rainer Bonar

On the basis of a triptych dealing with the order to shoot at the inner-German border, Bonar was arrested in February 1973 on suspicion of " subversive agitation ". Forewarned by a notice, however, he burned the plant before his arrest. In May 1975 he was drafted into the NVA . Bonar, who worked as a "regimental painter", used his office space for his own work, while his friend, the painter Gerd Sonntag , worked secretly in the barracks' attic. However, the works of the two artists were soon discovered by the NVA and some of them confiscated or destroyed. Bonar was questioned on charges of “ political-ideological diversion ” (PID), demoted and in October 1976 “dishonorable” discharged from the army. During the interrogation, the MfS interrogator replied : "You are an ulcer in the ass of the Republic".

From 1973 to 1977 Bonar completed an evening course specializing in painting at the Art Academy Berlin-Weißensee a. a. with Bruno Bernitz and Arnold Pemmann. After working as a theater painter, including for the Berliner Ensemble and the Berlin State Opera, from 1977 he worked as an exhibition designer and commercial artist at the Humboldt University in Berlin and for the art service of the Evangelical Church. From 1980 he also worked as a journalist, for example for the features section of the daily newspaper “Neue Zeit”. Bonar had already applied for an exit visa in 1978, but it was not until the beginning of 1981 that he was given permission to leave the GDR. He moved to West Berlin and shortly afterwards changed his family name from Lietzke to Bonar - among other things, to help a friend escape from the GDR via Hungary without being recognized and not to endanger his family. However, the escape on August 25, 1983 failed; As a result, Bonar was briefly imprisoned in Hungary and his friend was transferred to the GDR.

At the beginning of the eighties, Bonar worked in West Berlin as a driver and restorer, before starting in 1986 as a freelance painter and graphic artist. From 1987 to 1988 Bonar studied fine art at the FHS Cologne with Karl Marx and received his degree as a “master class student”. From 1987 to 1991 he also worked in West Berlin as a lecturer for the All-German Institute and the Otto Benecke Foundation as well as at the Paul Löbe Institute for cultural and German politics. Since his election as deputy chairman of the Berlin Professional Association of Visual Artists (BBK) in 1989, Bonar has been increasingly active in cultural policy and journalism - for example for specialist magazines such as “Kulturpolitik” and “ Kunst am Bau ” as well as for daily newspapers such as the “ Berliner Morgenpost ”. As 2nd chairman of the Professional Association of Visual Artists Berlin , he turned against the association's incorporation into the IG Medien (today: ver.di) and through his successful intervention preserved its independence as a professional association. As a result of the upheaval in the GDR, Bonar was able to establish contact with artist friends such as Bärbel Bohley and Robert Rehfeldt without hindrance . From 1994 until his suicide two years later, he was a lecturer at the University of Brandenburg for the field of advanced training for Brandenburg art teachers in Potsdam and at the same time continued to work as an artist.

plant

Rainer Bonar's oeuvre reflects his skepticism towards socialist ideology and its implementation in the GDR. Aside from socialist realism , the triptych on the subject of shooting orders was created . The three-part oil painting was created in 1972 and shows the head of Erich Honecker , a border soldier who stabbed a man in the back with a bayonet, barbed wire, a wall and tanks, and in the center the words “66 dead on the Berlin Wall”. During his interrogation, he explains: "It was important for me to express my negative attitude towards the shooting order at the GDR state border".

The Entombment of the Soldier

The 1977 painting “The Entombment of the Soldier” is one of Bonar's key images. The one laid out carries the features of Wolf Biermann, who was expatriated the year before . Lenin , Castro , Rilke , Turgenev , Claudius and Hermlin have gathered behind the dead soldier . The work was on view at the Weißensee School of Art at the opening of an exhibition. It was only on this occasion that a functionary noticed the painting's hidden message: the artist wanted to show that with Biermann's expatriation, the hope for social liberalization had also been “buried”.
At the beginning of his oeuvre, Rainer Bonar seemed to devote himself to classical genres. In his individual pictures there are portraits, a few still lifes and landscapes. Roland März therefore speaks of a painted "intimism of credibility" in connection with the Berlin School. In the sense of Cézanne , nature is reduced; color becomes the main means of composition. Bonar himself said: “The determining factor is the tectonics of the painterly means, the style and the sensual value of the color.” It is not the drawing, light or shadow that creates the picture structure, but the color values ​​that are coordinated with one another. The shapes are simplified.

In the seventies he took numerous photos of the milieu - portraits and group photos such as informal meetings of the Prenzlauer Berg scene at Ekkehard Maass or the decaying structural substance of East Berlin. The photographs serve as counter-images to the state-supporting images of the line-loyal mass media and reflect a social documentary claim. With the means of photography, the artists record what is happening around them. They were created on my own behalf, without the possibility of publishing them in the GDR. The photographic legacy of Bonar has not yet been fully indexed.

After his resettlement, the series “Berlin Pictograms” was created. Based on AR Penck , the artist turned to abstraction as an international language. In terms of style and motif, there are clear parallels to Penck's archaic world of symbols, as well as echoes of the informal techniques of graffiti art.

The Prussian Icarus from the series "Berlin Piktogramme"
The crash from the series "Berlin Pictograms"

The Icarus symbolism runs like a red thread through the artist's works. "The Prussian Icarus" from 1984 shows the Prussian eagle and was based on Wolf Biermann's "Ballade of the Prussian Icarus". According to his own statements, Bonar interpreted the myth further: for him it would stand "as a symbol of chopping off, getting out, detaching and overcoming being down-to-earth, striving towards higher knowledge - including falling back to the bottom of the facts: with a fatal outcome."

Since June 2018, Rainer Bonar's artistic estate has been in the archive of the Federal Foundation for Coming to terms with the SED dictatorship in Berlin.

The Prussian Icarus

reception

For some time now, Rainer Bonar's life and works have increasingly come into the focus of public perception. In February 2012, for example, the permanent exhibition "Expressing my negative attitude towards the shooting order - Rainer Bonar 1956–1996" opened in the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie Wall Museum in Berlin. The opening speech was given by Roland Jahn , Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR . In autumn 2013 there was a special exhibition of Bonar's works in the Marienfelde emergency reception center in Berlin. In February 2016 a solo exhibition opens in Reinickendorf Town Hall.

Hannes Schwenger's short story "Robert flies" is based on Bonar's biography and contains etchings by the artist. With the Icarus flight over walls and borders, they dedicate themselves to dealing with being locked up. Hannelore Offner and Klaus Schröder dedicated the book “bounded - excluded: visual arts and party rule in the GDR 1961–1989”, alongside Sieghard Pohl , the artist Rainer Bonar. His curriculum vitae was marked by resistance to totalitarian presumptions, and during his lifetime he contributed to the creation of the book with indispensable information.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions:

6-7 / 1985 Art project in the Steglitz Clinic of the Free University of Berlin
9/1985 All-German Institute, Berlin
1-2 / 1988 KAOS Gallery, Cologne
11/1993 ATRIUM youth art school, Berlin
since 2/2012 Permanent exhibition: "Expressing my negative attitude towards the shooting order - Rainer Bonar 1956–1996", Wall Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie Berlin
11/2013 - 3/2014 Special exhibition: "I was never one of you!" The artist Rainer Bonar between East and West. Marienfelde emergency reception center memorial, Berlin
3–6 / 2016 Special exhibition "From there - here. Reinickendorf Years 1981–1996", Rathaus-Galerie Reinickendorf, Berlin

Exhibition participation:

1977 Exhibition at the Weißensee School of Art
2-3 / 1980 Berlin, Pictures of Our City, Art Service of the Protestant Church, East Berlin
12/1985 - 1/1986 Icarus, Myth as Realism in Examples of Contemporary Art, Realism Studio 33, New Society for Fine Arts, Berlin
12/1985 - 1/1986 From there here, exhibition of former GDR artists, Kunstverein Villa Streccius, Landau / Pfalz
8-10 / 1986 In the field of tension, 25 years of the Berlin Wall, gallery in the Fontane-Haus, Art Office Berlin-Reinickendorf
5-8 / 1987 The dream of flying, Rathaus Berlin-Tempelhof
8-10 / 1987 twin town art, Kunstamt Berlin-Reinickendorf
5-6 / 1989 Jericho, artist symposium, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
6-7 / 1990 14 Reinickendorf artists, Art Office Berlin-Reinickendorf
10-12 / 1990 Expatriated - Artists from the GDR 1949–1989, Dresden State Art Collection, Albertinum
1-3 / 1991 Deichtorhallen, Hamburg
11-12 / 1992 Gallery iX, Berlin
11-12 / 1994 twin town art, Kunstamt Berlin-Reinickendorf

Publications

  • Bonar, Rainer: Nippes auf dem Vertiko, in: Kulturforum der Sozialdemokratie (Ed.): Nippes auf dem Vertiko, Essen 1993, pp. 73 ff.
  • Bonar, Rainer (Red.): The unresolved present. Tasks and possibilities of the public libraries in Brandenburg; Documentation; Day seminar of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Brandenburg State Office, November 4, 1991 / ed. from the Brandenburg State Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Brandenburg 1992.
  • Bonar, Rainer: The flight of humans - the impossibility of flying away, in: Nill, Peggy (Red.): The dream of flying: Fascination between art and technology, Berlin (West) 1987, page 57.
  • Bonar, Rainer: Freedom of art does not mean freedom for the artist, in: Kulturpolitik 4/1989, pp. 119–120.
  • Bonar, Rainer: The art and the coal, in: Kulturpolitik 2/1990, p. 57.
  • Bonar, Rainer: RENT A PICTURE ?, in: Kunst am Bau 28 (1988) 09, pp. 24-25.
  • Bonar, Rainer: The blurring of words, in: Kulturpolitik 4/1992, pp. 115–117.
  • Support of the book project: “The border through Germany. A Chronicle from 1945 to 1990 ”by Roman Grafe, Berlin 2002.

literature

  • Wanda Schulte, Katharina Hochmuth (Ed.): Catalog "Rainer Bonar - I was never one of you!" ISBN 978-3-944721-78-1
  • Rainer Bonar . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 12, Saur, Munich a. a. 1995, ISBN 3-598-22752-3 , p. 470.
  • Kipphoff, Petra: Sloping Limits, in: Die Zeit, October 12, 1990, http://www.zeit.de/1990/42/schraege-grenzen .
  • Consistent in resistance. Wall museum commemorates the painter Rainer Bonar, in: Berliner Woche, 12/2012, p. 3.
  • Offner, Hannelore / Schröder, Klaus (eds.): Delimited - excluded: visual arts and party rule in the GDR 1961–1989, Berlin 2000.
  • Schmidt, Werner (Ed.): Ausgebürgert. Artists from the GDR 1949–1989, Berlin 1990.
  • Count, Roman: Rainer Bonar. "To express my rejection of the order to shoot at the state border of the GDR", speech on the permanent exhibition at Checkpoint Charlie Wall Museum on February 28, 2012.
  • Schwenger, Hannes: Rainer Bonar b. Lietzke. Short chronicle, unpublished.
  • Berlin Wall Foundation (ed.): The Berlin Wall in Art. Fine arts, literature and film, Berlin 2011

Web links

Commons : Rainer Bonar  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. u. a. Berlin Wall Foundation (ed.): The Berlin Wall in Art . Fine arts, literature and film, Berlin 2011, p. 145.
  2. ↑ Werner Schmidt (Ed.): Ausgebürgert . Artists from the GDR 1949–1989, Berlin 1990, p. 80.
  3. ↑ Interrogation protocol of January 9, 1973, Captain Fisch, BStU MfS ZA 4602/73, p. 91.
  4. ↑ Kipphoff, Petra: Sloping Limits, in: Die Zeit, October 12, 1990, http://www.zeit.de/1990/42/schraege-grenzen , March 19, 2013.
  5. ↑ March, Roland: Berliner Schule, in: E. Blume / R. March (ed.): Art in the GDR. A retrospective of the Nationalgalerie, Berlin 2003, p. 220.
  6. ↑ Bonar, Rainer: "To my work", text excerpt.
  7. ↑ Nill, Peggy (ed.): The dream of flying: Fascination between art and technology, Berlin (West) 1987, page 75.
  8. ↑ Cf. u. a. Berlin Wall Foundation (ed.): The Berlin Wall in Art. Fine arts, literature and film, Berlin 2011, pp. 144/145.
  9. ↑ Schröder, Klaus: Preliminary remarks: Art and artists in (late) totalitarian socialism, in: Offner / Schröder: bounded - excluded p. 14.
  10. ↑ Rainer Bonar From there - here. Reinickendorfer years 1981-1996. February 26, 2016, accessed September 3, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Bonar, Rainer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lietzke, Rainer (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, graphic artist and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH February 29, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 25, 1996
Place of death Berlin