Rolf Dieß

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Rolf Dieß (born December 3, 1925 in Bad Langensalza ; † November 28, 1964 in Darmstadt ) was a German painter , graphic artist and mosaic artist of the post-war period who moved to West Germany in the course of the formalism dispute in the GDR .

Life

Rolf Dieß was born in 1925 as the son of a master painter. His attendance at the grammar school ended prematurely with the beginning of the Second World War . After being awarded a Notabitur, he was drafted as a soldier and taken prisoner of war. In 1948 he returned to Bad Langensalza and began an apprenticeship with his father. In the same year, after winning a competition, he was given the opportunity to study at the Weimar University of Architecture and Fine Arts . His teachers were Hanns Hoffmann-Lederer , Hermann Kirchberger and Otto Herbig . During this time, Dieß became friends with the painters Waldo Dörsch , Ev Grüger, Heinz Günther, Alfred Traugott Mörstedt and Gerhard Ströch , who later took the stage name Altenbourg . In 1951, the visual arts department in Weimar was closed in the course of the formalism dispute in which artists were asked to help build a new socialist society. Despite good study results in intermediate examinations, Dieß was not allowed to continue studying at the Dresden University of Fine Arts on the grounds that his art was "too far apart from a social and professional perspective". This had to leave the university in Weimar without a degree. At first he worked again in his father's company. To earn a living, Dieß worked as a restorer at the Angermuseum in Erfurt from 1953 . In addition, he worked artistically, dealt with printing techniques and painting. When a portrait sculpture "Rolf Dieß" by Waldo Dörsch was exhibited in Jena in 1959 , a polemical article appeared that hit Dörsch and thus indirectly also Dieß: Both artists were accused of "intellectual arrogance and extreme individualism". Her artistic interest is not in the builders of socialism. Shortly afterwards Dieß drew the consequences. His marriage in 1960 was also the farewell party for the friends. In August the couple moved to Friedberg (Hesse) , where Dieß initially worked as a restorer in the Wetterau Museum . He had his first personal exhibition in Friedberg before moving to Darmstadt in 1962 . There he worked as a restorer at the Hessian State Museum . Personal strokes of fate and marital problems gave him psychological problems. In September 1964 he divorced his wife. After that, the depression increased. After several suicide attempts, Dieß was found dead in his apartment on November 28, 1964.

plant

This was shaped in Weimar by teachers who related to the formal language of German Expressionism and the Bauhaus . His work moves between the typical poles of objectivity and abstraction . He portrayed artist friends (Portrait Waldo Dörsch, 1955, Stadtmuseum Bad Langensalza) and his parents, drew Parisian street scenes (1962) or found motifs in the Thuringian area. Christian themes also shaped his work. These designed glass windows for the churches of Schmersau / Altmark and Lauchhammer-Süd . Another example of his public works are mosaic columns in the entrance hall of the main building of the Technical University of Ilmenau . In 1961 he designed windows, wire reliefs and fountains for the 1st International Horticultural Exhibition of Socialist Countries , which was held in Erfurt . The water basins designed by Dieß on the grounds of the Erfurt Cyriaksburg were destroyed because they supposedly did not fit the concept of the IGA . After he moved to the West, Rolf Dieß's work received little attention. The city museum in the Augustinian monastery Bad Langensalza owns around 100 works by the artist through donations and has set up his own room in which a selection of representational and abstract paintings, drawings and graphics is exhibited.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1960: Atelier exhibition at Neuwerkstrasse 29 (Weinreiter House), Erfurt
  • 1962: Wetterau Museum , Friedberg
  • 1963: Gallery Dagmar Wirth, West Berlin
  • 1963: Deutsches Theater Göttingen
  • 1965: Memorial exhibition on the occasion of the first day of death, Galerie der Erfurter Ateliergemeinschaft, Erfurt
  • 1974: Gallery picture room at the basilica, Seligenstadt
  • 1981: Gallery in the Old Town Hall, Langen (Hesse)
  • 1996: Painting and graphics by Rolf Dieß , Heimatmuseum, Bad Langensalza
  • 1996: Rolf Dieß 1925–1964 , Galerie Profil, Weimar
  • 1999: Alfred Traugott Mörstedt and friends from the Weimar period: Gerhard Altenbourg , Rolf Dieß: collages, woodcuts, drawings, paintings , Galerie am Fischmarkt, Erfurt
  • 2001: Rolf Dieß and friends , city museum in the Augustinian monastery, Bad Langensalza
  • 2005: Rolf Dieß , City Museum in the Augustinian Monastery, Bad Langensalza
  • 2015: Out of time. Rolf Dieß for the 90th , Dryburg Castle , Bad Langensalza

Working in public collections

Working in public space

monograph

  • Walking a fine line: Rolf Dieß - An artist's life . With texts by Dieter Koethe, Reiner Schlegelmilch, Sabine Tominski, Jürgen Winter. Catalog on the occasion of his 80th birthday and the opening of his cabinet exhibition in the Bad Langensalza City Museum on December 3, 2005. Bad Langensalza, City Museum at the Augustinian Monastery, Mühlhausen Museums, 2005, ISBN 978-3-935547-12-3 .

Literature (selection)

  • Elmar Jansen , Christian visual arts and church handicrafts from the area of ​​the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany . In: Das Münster, 11th year, issue 5/6, pp. 197–207, 1958.
  • New Darmstadt Secession . Catalog for the autumn exhibition 1963, Darmstadt 1963.
  • Art against the wind. The Erfurt studio community 1963 to 1974 , Mühlhäuser Museen / GrafikArt e. V. Erfurt, Mühlhausen, Erfurt 1998.
  • Marion Aschenbach (ed.), Alfred Traugott Mörstedt and friends from the Weimar period: Gerhard Altenbourg , Rolf Dieß: collages, woodcuts, drawings, painting . Catalog for the exhibition in the series "Artists in Thuringia" from June 27 to August 1, 1999. Galerie am Fischmarkt, Erfurt 1999.
  • Jürgen Winter, Rolf Luhn (ed.), Cross section. Kunstraum Thuringia - Aspects of painting and graphics in the 20th century , Glaux Verlag Christine Jäger , Jena 1999.
  • Ulrike Rüdiger , interior views. Art in Thuringia: 1945 to today , ed. from the Gera Art Collection , Gera 1999.
  • Sabine Tominski, Rolf Dieß - Cabinet exhibition in the Bad Langensalza City Museum . In: Thüringer Museumshefte, Vol. 14, 2005, pp. 58–61.
  • Reiner Schlegelmilch, Rolf Dieß on the 50th anniversary of his death . In: moment. The culture magazine for the Hainichland, No. 12, Sons Medien GmbH, Bad Langensalza 2014, pp. 10–11.
  • Juliane chub, an anachronistic: Rolf This, the 90th . In: moment. The culture magazine for Hainichland, No. 1, Sons Medien GmbH, Bad Langensalza 2016, p. 10.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walking a fine line: Rolf Dieß - An artist's life . With texts by Dieter Koethe, Reiner Schlegelmilch, Sabine Tominski, Jürgen Winter. Catalog on the occasion of his 80th birthday and the opening of his cabinet exhibition in the Bad Langensalza City Museum on December 3, 2005. Bad Langensalza, City Museum at the Augustinian Monastery, Mühlhausen Museums, 2005, ISBN 978-3-935547-12-3 .
  2. ↑ Article by Iris Henning from October 12, 2011 , accessed November 20, 2017
personal data
SURNAME This, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Langensalza
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1964
Place of death Darmstadt