Rainer Lukas Motz

Rainer Lukas Motz , called Munke (born August 19, 1934 in Heidelberg ; † December 26, 1990 there ) was a German painter, nonconformist and bohemian .

life and work

After secondary school and an apprenticeship as an upholsterer and decorator, Munke turned to painting in 1953 and attended the Werkkunstschule Darmstadt and the Academy of Arts in Munich Xaver Fuhr. Study visits to Italy (including Florence, Venice, Rome) are documented for the period from 1956 to 1958. In 1960 he began to study art painting at the Free Academy of the Arts in Mannheim, for which he received a scholarship. He completed his training in 1963 as a master student of Paul Berger-Bergner and has since worked as a freelance artist. His studio was in Heidelberg-Rohrbach .

Initially committed to the expressionist style of painting, Munke changed his style in favor of a more realistic basic conception. Motifs from the world of legends, fairy tales and mythology , but above all many pictures of children, characterize his early work. From the mid-1960s onwards, the artist also increasingly turned to macabre subjects. His works at that time reveal an intensive preoccupation with necromantic ideas; he paints ghosts and ghosts and deals with haunted events. In addition to numerous still lifes , his repertoire also includes fantastic depictions of architecture, harlequin and mask pictures. The main works include five triptychs , two of which are considered lost.

The period between 1968 and 1975 can be regarded as the main creative period. During these years his most typical pictures were created, which show an unmistakable handwriting and stylistically, as thematically, were unique in the then Federal Republic.

After 1979, the production of studio painting declined and gave way to a new field of activity. The painter discovered wall and facade painting and devoted himself to this new task almost until his death in 1990. Pictures of this genre have been preserved in Heidelberg-Rohrbach, Neckargemünd and Freiburg.

His grave is in the Rohrbach cemetery.

Appreciation

Munke is one of the representatives of neo-romantic painting with concrete figurative representations and a preference for unusual subjects. At first he succeeded in forming a convincing antithesis to the then prevalent conceptions of art and styles. With the emerging student movement, his work met with ever greater rejection, his paintings were denigrated stylistically as anachronistic , his pictorial motifs as reactionary .

Appreciated by art collectors in what was then the Federal Republic of Germany, Munke was respected beyond Heidelberg until his accidental death. His paintings are now scattered all over the world and are almost exclusively in private hands.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Kotzur: cheerful to macabre. The world of images of the Heidelberg painter Rainer Motz, called Munke . In: Series of publications by the Heimatmuseum Heidelberg-Rohrbach . tape 17 , 2018, ISBN 978-3-921522-40-0 .
2. ↑ Hrdina, Dirk, Motz-Munke, Rainer, 1934–1990 .: "He brought color into our lives": the wall paintings by Motz Munke in Heidelberg-Rohrbach . Heimatmuseum Heidelberg-Rohrbach, Heidelberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-921522-37-0 .
3. ↑ Motz Munke - the punker. Retrieved February 20, 2018 . 
4. ^ Munke retrospective. Retrieved February 25, 2018 . 
5. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Kotzur: Myth Munke. From the life of the Heidelberg painter Rainer Motz - Munke . In: Series of publications of the Heimatmuseum Heidelberg-Rohrbach . tape 18 . Heidelberg-Rohrbach 2018, ISBN 978-3-921522-42-4 .