Robert Rotar

Robert Rotar (born June 24, 1926 in Berlin ; † August 13, 1999 in Düsseldorf ) was a painter , object artist and photographer . His work is represented in numerous collections at home and abroad, including Belgium, France and the USA.

Life

Rotar attended the Waldorf School in Berlin from 1935 to 1941 and the school in Vitte on Hiddensee until it was finally closed by the National Socialists . Then he came to the Landerziehungsheim Schondorf / Ammersee until 1944. He participated in World War II as a tank driver and radio operator. He spent his subsequent captivity in Denmark. After the war, he worked in various professions.

He received his artistic training at the Cologne factory school . He then helped to build the company Knoll International GmbH in Germany. Here contacts were made with artists, architects and gallery owners, including Ernst Wilhelm Nay , Wolfgang Ketterer , Florence Knoll and Hans G. Knoll, Mies van der Rohe , Hanna Bekker vom Rath , Jean Pierre Wilhelm , Rolf Jahresling , Alfred Schmela , Henryk Berlewi , James Lee Byars , Günther Uecker , Joseph Beuys and others. From 1957 he was a member of the Deutscher Werkbund . From 1973 he worked as a freelance painter and photographer.

The artistic work

Rotar's work hangs in major private art collections at home and abroad. His artistic work marks a singular position within the contemporary art scene that has hardly been researched to this day. It is a rather quiet but radical work analogous to his introverted life.

Rotar is known as the "magician of the spiral" : Since his artistic beginnings around 1950 he has dealt with the subject of the spiral . They are dynamic, sweeping, swirling or spiral shapes ending in a circle, expanding or contracting. For him, the spiral was the motif in which "space" and "time" could most vividly be combined and visually implemented. He often painted in a trance-like, meditative state. However, it was not the spontaneous gestures that determined his artistic impetus, but the intellectual examination of the motif of the spiral. For him, the spiral is a symbol of the infinite , the primordial and the primeval , here he was able to artistically express the fundamental questions of the cosmos and being most consistently. This is where the later formulated idea of ​​the "correspondence" of macrocosm and microcosm is derived.

The shape of the spiral can also be found in seals and stamps from 1977. From this time on he seals and stamps all works and extends the range of topics. Kabbalistic , alchemical and astrological signs, tarot and numbers are directly related to each other through content-related aspects. They are magical-subjective transformations, the reading and scope of which are consciously limited to meaning.

His world of ideas refers to Hermes Trismegistus and his "tabula smaragdina" as the origin of all wisdom. In one of his last statements he formulated an overarching idea: "As above so below" and "as below so above". This definition runs through his entire work. At the same time he emphasized the motif of the " coincidentia oppositorum" , the union of opposites. Other important topics are death, death and life, death and eros, death and change. In terms of art theory, Rotar's art is a doctrine of "correspondences" or "principles".

In order to be able to adequately assess ROTAR's philosophical and scientific worldview, one must deal with its sources, its knowledge, its basic principles and correspondences, its iconography and its symbolism in the artistic language of forms. Rotar was remarkably educated, thought deductively. His universalistic knowledge was based on the one hand on a scientific pole, on the other hand on a philosophical one. On the scientific level, he dealt with astrophysics, atomic physics, molecular biology, brain and genetic research. He was friends with international astrophysicists and researchers from various disciplines. Werner Heisenberg , Wolfgang Pauli and James Jeans , Niels Bohr , Max Born and Erwin Schrödinger deserve special mention . In philosophy he dealt with Hermes Trismegistus, the older magic and astrology and the more recent alchemy, Jewish Kabbalah and Tarot, the early world religions, Gnosis, Neoplatonism, Egyptian and Hellenistic mystery religions, the Bible and mysticism, cosmogony and cosmology, runology , Numbers and number symbolism.

Rotar was friends with James Lee Byars (1932–1997), with Joseph Beuys and with the Jesuit priest and exhibition organizer Friedhelm Mennekes . "I am my first viewer". With this laconic sentence, Rotar answered the question of how the art world and the public perceive his works in his last interview with the philosopher Heinrich Heil . When he died unexpectedly on August 13, 1999, Father Friedhelm Mennekes portrayed him as the "great silent" in his funeral speech. "With him, a powerful artist of our time enters the elements".

The contemplative power of Rotar's work has remained unbroken for nearly five decades. He left behind an oeuvre that includes around 5,000 oil paintings and drawings, including a large contingent of photos and videos. His extensive, almost completely preserved written estate is documented in the " German Art Archive " in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg , where it is now scientifically processed (inventory no. 1155) and accessible. A large part of his works of art, on the other hand, are on permanent loan to the Museum Schloss Moyland Foundation , the Joseph Beuys archive and the van der Grinten collection in Bedburg-Hau . A monograph has been published since 2009 that provides insights into the life and work of Rotar.

Exhibitions (selection)

• Mathildenhöhe , Darmstadt
• Marielies-Hess-Fonds in connection with Galerie Loehr, Frankfurt / M. (with Daniel Spoerri, Thomas Bayrle, Lucio Fontana, Hermann Göpfert, Christian Megert, Adolf Luther, among others)
• International Exhibition of the Federal Republic of Germany, Sydney / Australia
• Galerie Denisé Rene and Hans Mayer , Düsseldorf
• Rolf Ricke Gallery , Kassel
• Galerie Nickel, Bad Godesberg, Tokyo / Japan, Washington USA
• Hella Nebelung Gallery, Düsseldorf
• Galerie Lee, New York / USA
• Kückels Gallery, Bochum
• Gallery Schiessel, Cologne
• Falazik Gallery, Springhornhof, Neuenkirchen / Soltau
• Foreign Office, German Embassy, ​​Madras / India
• Alice Pauli Gallery, Lausanne / Switzerland
• Sole 1, Städtische Galerie, Bergkamen
• "ART", International Art Market, Basel / Switzerland
• Kaiser Wilhelm Museum , Krefeld
• Deutscher Werkbund NRW, Düsseldorf
• Municipal basement gallery, Palais Wittgenstein, Düsseldorf
• Foundation Museum Schloss Moyland , Bedburg-Hau
• Municipal gallery Teloy Mühle, Meerbusch
• Fellner von Feldegg Gallery, Krefeld
• German Architecture Museum , Frankfurt / M.
• Foundation museum ehrenhof, Düsseldorf
• Art in North Rhine-Westphalia , Collection of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia , Kornelimünster
• Gallery Cosar MTH, Düsseldorf
• Art Cologne, 44th International Art Market (Galerie Cosar MTH, Düsseldorf)
• Overbeck Society , Lübeck
• MEWO art gallery, Memmingen
• Art Cologne, 47th International Art Market (Galerie Dierking), Zurich
• Dirk Diering Gallery, Zurich / Switzerland

Artist friendships

James Lee Byars (USA), Joseph Beuys , Father Friedhelm Mennekes , Georg Muche ( Bauhaus ), Antoni Tàpies , Claes Oldenburg , Günther Uecker , Yves Klein , Anatol , Harald Naegeli ("Sprayer von Zürich"), Thomas Ring

Literature, media

• Robert Rotar. Life and work. 1926-1999 . Basics of his pictorial worlds and ideas, Bielefeld 2009.
• Komos - Cosmology , exhibition catalog, Museum Schloß Moyland Foundation, van der Grinten collection, Joseph Beuys Archive of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Bedburg-Hau, 2009.
• Rotar. Drawings. Drawings , Galerie Dirk Dierking (editor) Zurich 13.
• Catalog: Robert Rotar. Cosmic structures and symbols , 1979.
• Catalog: Robert Rotar. Everything is Spirit - Everything is Spiral , 2003.

Web links

• Literature by and about Robert Rotar in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of Robert Rotar