Rolf Eichelmann

Rolf Eichelmann (born February 29, 1940 in Burg near Magdeburg ) is a German-Greek painter.

Life

Rolf Eichelmann is the son of Wilhelm Eichelmann and the Greek Elfteria Samiou. He was born in Burg near Magdeburg and grew up in his mother's home country, as his father had lived there since 1931. He discovered his fondness for painting early on and visited the Kesariani monastery on the outskirts of Athens at the age of 11 to receive his first lessons in icon painting from the monks . After his parents separated, Eichelmann moved in 1954 to his father, who was already living in Germany . From 1956 to 1959 he studied portrait drawing and anatomy at Paul Linke's art academy in Karlsruhe and interior design from 1959 to 1962 . 1969 Eichelmann made his name as an architect independently .

Work

In most of his works, the focus is on people. This runs like a red thread through his entire artistic work. Models were the masters of the late Gothic and Renaissance , such as Leonardo da Vinci , Botticelli , El Greco , Dürer and also Peter Paul Rubens . Later he oriented himself towards Dali and Picasso .

After breaking away from traditional painting, he began to develop his personal style in the late 1950s. Numerous works were created in gouache .

Then he started experimenting with new techniques. The most important works of the 1960s are the “five o'clock” and “ Pieta ” in a technique he developed using charcoal, chalk and colored pencils on strong drawing paper. Eichelmann first exhibited these works of a decade in 1968.

At the beginning of the 1970s he was inspired by Surrealism and made numerous drawings and paintings in this art movement, such as “Expulsion of Eve from Paradise”, “Collective Dream of Three Nuns” and “A Prayer for Mary”. A few years later he began with a series of smaller mystical-folkloric pictures in acrylic on hardboard, in which he was strongly influenced by the stories of Carlos Castaneda . Castaneda's ideas of the irrational world of thought, mixed with the Greek world of legends, he built into his pictures. Eichelmann benefited from his lessons with the monks in his younger years and the influence of icon painting there was strongly expressed. That period ended in 1987.

In 1988 Eichelmann began to make his first etchings. The most important works for him, the cycle “Birth of Angels”, “Lovers” and etchings for the “Gilgamesh Epic”, which he illustrated only in 2000, were created using this technique.

Further large-format collages followed in 1991, which focus on people in an abstracted form. For this reduced, ornamental, flat form of expression, Eichelmann colored the paper (wrapping paper) himself. Under the title “Garden of Earthly Delights” he showed these works, which consisted of couples in love, for the first time in “Art in the Cold Store”.

In 1995 he devoted himself to the subject of tarot . On the Canary Island of La Gomera , numerous designs for the "Major Arcana" were created in acrylic on canvas. He himself describes this style as "New, Decorative, Fantastic Realism". By 2002, the entire 78 tables of the tarot deck had been created, which were also published as cards in the German-speaking countries under the title “Das Golden Gomera Tarot” and in the English-speaking countries as “New Century Tarot”.

Eichelmann's creative period was never politically oriented, yet he made a 4 meter wide and 2.40 meter high collage with the theme “11. September ”, as he was very affected by the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 in New York and immediately afterwards dealt artistically with this event.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Eichelmann developed his own technique in which he worked on fairytale-like themes from “1001 Nights” sensually in warm tones with lots of gold. For these “gold collages” he refined his works with Indian ink and gave them contours and faces. In 2004 the 12 signs of the zodiac were created as an etching, hand-colored with gold.

In 2005 Eichelmann began to make large sculptures. Consisting of five ceramic figures, which represent communicating children of the continents, which are supposed to symbolize the communication and connectedness of all humanity, he made this sculpture for the city of Burgau. A year later Eichelmann worked with students in the tenth grade from the secondary school in Burgau. Under his direction, the large-format sculptures (approx. 180 cm high) "The Four Seasons" and "Flower Column" were created, which were set up in public spaces.

In 2007 Eichelmann received the art prize of the city of Günzburg for his large sculpture "Anemos" (from the Greek "wind gust"). He produced the work of art with the artist Gabriele Birkner and it consists of 40 painted strips of fabric that were placed in a spiral on a meadow and are supposed to move through the wind.

In 2009 Eichelmann returned to two-dimensional works and produced a series of pen drawings on "The human figure". From 2012 to 2013, there were large charcoal drawings with colored pencils on paper, similar to those he designed in the 1960s. Then he created sixty landscape pictures from the Mindeltal, Kammeltal and Günztal in a new technique.

In 2013 he designed the large ceramic sculpture "River Goddess Gontia" for the city of Günzburg, which is the name of the city.

Works

• "Birth of Christ", "Five o'clock", (1950s)
• " Pieta " (1960s)
• "Collective dream of three nuns", "A prayer for Maria" (1970s)
• "Birth of the Angels" cycle (1980s)
• The Major Arcana from the Tarot (1990s)
• Gold collages "1001 Nights" (2000s)
• Sculptures "Communication", "The Four Seasons", "Flower Column" "Anemos", "River Goddess Gontia"

Web links

• Biography official website
• Die Liebende - Rolf Eichelmann Picture by Rolf Eichelmann
• Four friends and the art report to the Augsburger Allgemeine

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography official website, accessed on May 8, 2017.