Rolf Tschierschky
Rolf Tschierschky (born July 27, 1923 in Frankfurt am Main ) is a German painter , graphic artist and set designer .
Life
Tschierschky is the son of the painter and sculptor Alfred Tschierschky (* 1877) and Adele Biesenbach (* 1895) and the second of four children.
In 1937 the family moved to Berlin, where the father died shortly afterwards. In the Second World War , Rolf Tschierschky served in the Navy as a radio operator , most recently in Ahlbeck on the Baltic Sea, and in 1945 he was taken prisoner by the British. It was here that he took his first steps as a set designer and set painter for a traveling drama troupe that produced theater performances for Allied soldiers. After his release from captivity in 1947, he walked to Frankfurt, where the family then lived in a house on Dreikönigsstrasse.
Tschierschky attended evening courses in painting and art history at the Städelschule from 1948 to 1952 , with Arno König and Theo Garve, among others. During his studies he worked as a graphic artist in the advertising department at Hartmann & Braun on the design of advertising brochures.
From 1953 to 1956 he attended the graphics class of Hans Leistikow at the Staatliche Werkakademie in Kassel and the stage design class of Teo Otto . In Kassel he won first prize in a stage design competition advertised by the State Theater and, together with the Kassel artist Arnold Bode, helped organize the first documenta in 1954/55 . He married in 1957 and they have five children. This was followed by relocations to Braunschweig , Bonn and Offenburg , where he was employed as a commercial graphic artist for the outdoor advertising company Borsi KG from 1960 to 1965. During this time his work was characterized by airbrush technique and photo realism .
In 1965 the family moved to Mengeringhausen in Waldeck . There he was a member of the Mengeringhausen councilors from 1986 to 2000 . Tschierschky worked in Arolsen as a technical draftsman in the road construction department until 1983 . He then worked as a freelance artist. In 1988 he was commissioned to make a 3.65 meter high glass picture for the Belgian twin town Heusden-Zolder .
plant
Rolf Tschierschky's artistic production extends from 1943 to 2004, i.e. over 61 years. During this time, more than 1,600 works were created, which were photographically documented and cataloged by his grandson Sven Hinz between 2003-04.
It is typical for Rolf Tschierschky to absorb all the trends of his century and process them artistically. Although he names a few role models on which he consciously leaned - Max Beckmann in the 1950s, later Paul Cézanne - in reality, countless “spiritual fathers” can be discovered in Rolf Tschierschky's works. Comparable to a prism , all art currents, styles and techniques of the 20th century are broken up in it and merge on the canvas in terms of color and style to form a new artistic unit. He hardly consciously reflected on this process himself. For him, his own imagination was the most important source. Often uninvited, he reports, the images and ideas forced themselves on him. Especially at night, in the dark, they rose from the depths of his unconscious. Any similarities with the works of his contemporaries were secondary, he wanted to free himself from the inner images without claiming a style of his own. There were times when he quickly produced several pictures a day, slapped the paint in thick layers on the canvas or a piece of cardboard and smeared it with a spatula.
The painting techniques, styles, materials, subjects and formats are incredibly diverse . Rolf Tschierschky painted with 37 different media, from acrylic to watercolors, from pencil to crayon, charcoal and gold bronze to printing ink, red chalk and spirit varnish. He didn't even shrink from shoe polish. He dabbed, smeared, spatula or flung the paint onto hardboard, cardboard, chipboard, photo paper, normal paper, coated paper, glossy paper, tracing paper, beer mats, foils, Japanese and copperplate printing paper, canvas, grid foil, silk, newsprint and film foils.
Portraits
Hardly two of the total of 51 portraits are painted using the same technique. Whether oil painting, tachism , collage or pencil, the whole range of Rolf Tschierschky's craftsmanship and ingenuity comes into its own. The technique and style are used as characterizing tools to depict the personality to be represented. Each portrait tells its own story, which becomes apparent even if the person portrayed is unknown to the viewer.
Stage sets
Rolf Tschierschky's work as a set designer spanned the six years between 1954 and 1960. During this time he was employed at the state theaters in Kassel, Hamburg, Braunschweig and Offenburg and created 158 set designs and 70 costume sketches for around 30 productions.
Tschierschky got his first job at the Staatstheater Kassel after his studies, after he had won a stage design competition advertised by the theater. From 1954 to 1956 he was involved in 14 productions there, from contemporary plays such as Eurydice by Jean Anouilh to classics such as Mozart's Magic Flute .
Frankfurt Pictures
Most of the Frankfurt views were created after Rolf Tschierschky's return from captivity in 1947. Many of these images suggest an undamaged city, such as the watercolor Mainansicht from 1952. What he depicts is not the external reality of a destroyed city, but its indestructible Essence, like the artist's soul, which was tormented by the experience, but remained intact in its core and firmly based on a deeply felt Christian faith.
Of particular importance is a fictional synopsis of various Frankfurt panoramas, stylistically reminiscent of Beckmann, in which Rolf Tschierschky condenses his memories of his hometown. He himself counted this picture among his most important works.
Landscapes
Rolf Tschierschky was particularly drawn to the wide, open space. To a large extent, he has the ability to set light and colors in captivating transparency and to so to speak suck the viewer of the picture into its light-flooded, colorful atmosphere. The quick sketch of the Acropolis in Athens, for example, uses the simplest means to reproduce the typically Mediterranean incidence of light: empty spaces and dark surfaces convey bright sunlight and sharp shadows.
As in other works by Rolf Tschierschky, the landscape images cover the entire spectrum between fiction and reality, between subjective feelings and photographically exact replicas. The transition to the subject of the fantastic is fluid.
Fantastic
The approximately 500 so-called free works represent the largest part of Rolf Tschierschky's total oeuvre. They are pictures that were created without commission or external reason and that do not depict something externally perceptible, such as a landscape, but rather inner conditions, moods, mental states , Dreams and visions. They form the core of his artistic expression.
As in every group of works, a wide variety of painting techniques are used here, such as tachism, in which the paint is thrown onto the painting surface from a distance.
Objects and installations
It was not until the end of the 1980s, in the seventh decade of his life, that Rolf Tschierschky began to design larger sculptural objects. He often spent several years working on and drafting them without worrying that the chances of getting funds were slim and that he almost always acted without commission. He was so convinced of his visions that the question of how to implement them was of secondary importance.
After German reunification, he was intensely concerned with the design of a fountain for Berlin, which symbolically represented the overcoming of the National Socialist and Communist dictatorships.
He also designed glass pictures and lampshades made of Tiffany glass , which he made himself.
Religious works
Rolf Tschierschky was intensely concerned with the metaphysical throughout his life. He dealt in detail with events and people from the Bible, in the New Testament above all with the passion story of Jesus and the letters of Paul . The words of Jesus and their interpretation by Paul offered him support and consolation in difficult times.
literature
- Sven Hinz, Walo C Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic . AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-9523639-7-3 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Rolf Tschierschky in the catalog of the German National Library
- Website by Rolf Tschierschky
Individual evidence
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, p. 10
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, p. 11
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, p. 12
- ^ Councilors Mengeringhausen. Retrieved June 12, 2019 .
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, p. 14
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, p. 147
- ↑ Vernissage and book presentation "Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic" | Sound signals! Accessed June 12, 2019 (German).
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, p. 14
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, pp. 25–28
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, pp. 58–69
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, pp. 72–90
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, pp. 92–115
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, pp. 128–136
- ^ Sven Hinz, Walo C. Ilg: Rolf Tschierschky - A painter of the fantastic. , AbisZett-Verlag, 2015, pp. 138–152
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Tschierschky, Rolf |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter, graphic artist and set designer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 27, 1923 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Frankfurt am Main |