Thomas Ziegler (painter)

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Thomas Ziegler (Philipp Thomas Ziegler; born September 22, 1947 in Limbach , † December 31, 2014 near Netzeband ) was a German painter .

The painter Thomas Ziegler, 2009

Origin and education

Thomas Ziegler grew up in an artistic and very conservative Christian environment. The father, a freelance painter, came from an old pastor's family. One great-grandfather was archdeacon of St. Anne's Church in Annaberg-Buchholz, the other was a royal Saxon general . The grandfather was the pastor of Limbach. The mother came from a merchant family that was expropriated in 1947 under Russian occupation. He began to draw and paint in childhood. After attending elementary school in Limbach-Oberfrohna, he graduated from high school. From 1966 to 1969 he studied social psychology at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena . In 1969 he moved to the Leipzig School of Graphics and Book Art . Two years of basic studies with Werner Tübke were followed by three years of illustration and painting with Rolf Kuhrt . In 1974 he received a place as a master class student at the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art with Walter Womacka for three years . During this time he continued to paint in his Leipzig studio.

Artistic creation

Ziegler's style was shaped by the Leipzig School . He painted his early realistic and surrealistic pictures using the glaze technique of the old masters . At the same time he experimented with other means of expression: pseudo-naivety, narrative variants up to the pictorial sheet. In 1979 he painted the picture Self-Portrait in the Leipzig studio , in which a portrait of Siqueiros is mounted, with his saying: “The final victory has yet to be achieved”. The picture was taken on the XII. Shown at the Paris Biennial in 1982, later bought by the Ministry of Culture and lost until 2013. Today it is in the Museum of Young Art in Frankfurt / Oder . Ziegler's pictures repeatedly led to violent arguments. Provocation was found in many of his pictures and was part of his artistic conception.

Perestroika and glasnost - the changes in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev , also had an impact on the GDR , and their functionaries had a very mixed opinion. On the one hand respect for the big brother, on the other hand fear of thorough de-Stalinization and democratic socialism . It was in this situation that Ziegler's best-known work was created, the four-part series Soviet soldiers in 1987 . Wooden planks are drawn with charcoal on a vermilion background. The soldiers sit on them, rather wobbly, who get something boyish through a deliberate shift in proportions. A total break with the previous iconography of the Soviet hero. He painted it on his own commission from 1986 to 1987 and sold it to the central board of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship . At the 10th art exhibition in Dresden, the picture caused a stir. Peter Nisbet, the curator of the Bush-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University, organized the first and only exhibition of GDR art in the USA Twelve Artists from the GDR . The GDR administration, which was hostile to Ziegler's picture, like perestroika itself, refused to exhibit the picture in the USA. Peter Nisbet insisted on Ziegler's participation, otherwise the exhibition would fail. The exhibition came about and has been successfully shown in various university museums and galleries in the United States. After the collapse of the GDR , the picture disappeared in the Beeskow art archive .

In 1987 Ziegler went to Nicaragua for nine months . Under his direction, 40 pictures were created for the children's department of the Carlos Marx Hospital (today: Hospital Alemán Nicaragüense). He worked with the Art School in Managua, the Association of Artists and the Minister of Culture, Padre Ernesto Cardenal . In 1988 he became a member of the central board of the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR and head of the Nicaragua project . He tried to build a network of international artists. The work was made difficult by the GDR administration, ultimately blocked - and with the collapse of the GDR history. Since his stay in Nicaragua, Ziegler has consciously turned to surrealism.

From 1990 to 1992 he worked on a picture book with his own texts and drawings on the life of Friedrich Nietzsche . In 1994 Ziegler met the Berlin painter and footman student Reinhard Dickel and began painting plein air . At the same time, the cycle Odyssey, Ziegler's last figurative work, was created. From 1995 he changed the paint skin and the subject of his pictures: gestural painting and landscape. Most of these often large-format pictures were created on Rügen and are impressions of the landscape, something between illusion and abstraction. The illustration of terms is avoided as far as possible. It's about pond, garden, coast. For Ziegler, the image surface is an ontological level with structuring actors: line, surface, color, abstraction, appearance (figurative latency) and illusion, on which what is seen and what is thought merge and create surreality. As early as 1988, in the “Twelve Artists from the GDR” catalog, he made the following statement: “The image as an ontological level, on which 'external' and 'internal' are the same, only subject to the logic of the surface.” under all of Ziegler's pictures a white lower edge and a red line with which he succeeded in making this ontological level with its pictorial reality clear. Painting directly was Ziegler's obsession over the last few years. His pictures are a mixture of perception, fantasy, consciousness, subconscious, of the rational and the prerational. T. Ziegler: Pictures are also places where rationality and magic meet to celebrate a party.

Thomas Ziegler's complete works have not yet been recorded. The estate alone contains 260 large-format pictures, around 1000 gouaches, 50 sketch and workbooks, objects, tiles, installations, 25 graphic novels, and letters.

Stations

Thomas Ziegler worked in Leipzig until 1979. He was married to the painter Doris Ziegler from 1972 to 1981 . The son Martin (* 1977) emerged from this marriage. In 1979 he moved to Schwerin with his second wife Carmen, whom he married in 1981. In 1987/88 he worked in Nicaragua for nine months. After the collapse of the GDR, Ziegler went to Berlin in 1990. In 2004 he moved to Rügen for three years , then to Hamburg. Thomas Ziegler lived in Netzeband (district of Katzow ) since October 2011 .

Thomas Ziegler's circle of friends included the writer Peter Brasch (1955–2001) and the painter Tobias Ebert (1952–2010). Thomas Ziegler was close friends with the Moscow painter couple Nikolay Beljanow and Tamara Gudzenko and the painter Reinhard Dickel . He had a long-term pen friendship with the painter Ronald Paris .

Thomas Ziegler died on December 31, 2014 near Netzeband near Katzow.

Works (selection)

  • 1976 Young couple (Peter Brasch and Birgitt) , State Museum Schwerin
  • 1979 Self-portrait in the Leipzig studio , XII. Biennale de Paris, Museum of Young Art Frankfurt (Oder)
  • 1979 Where's the snow from last year , XII. Biennale de Paris, Jena private collection
  • 1979/89 Patient group with fountain , XII Biennale de Paris, Jena private collection
  • 1979 Remembrance perspective of a New Year festival , Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig, permanent loan from the Ludwig Institute
  • 1984/85 Lucie Hoehnl , State Museum Schwerin
  • 1986/87 Soviet soldiers 1987 , State Collection Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
  • 1989 Rivas , private collection, Vienna
  • 1990 The sublime
  • 1990 cheers behind Sprelakat , private property, Berlin
  • 1992 FN loop , installation of 18 metal ladders
  • 1992 The FN loop. Serious and cheerful from the life of the fabulous Friedrich Nietzsche . A picture book. Reflections-Volume 1 Friedrich Nietzsche Foundation, Naumburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-9818356-0-1 .
  • 1994 Odyssey cycle , private collection, Jena
  • 2006 winter evening
  • 2008 autumn on the Elbe
  • 2009 harvest
  • 2013 Guardian
  • 2014 Requiem

Awards

literature

  • Karl-Max Kober: Thomas Ziegler's self-portrait in the studio. In: Weimar Contributions. Volume 25, Issue 7, 1979, pp. 100-102.
  • Karin Thomas: Painting in the GDR 1949–1979 . DuMont, Cologne 1980.
  • Peter Nisbet: Twelve Artists from the German Democratic Republic . Harvard University, Busch Reisinger Museum, 1989. Catalog for the exhibition, September 16 - November 5, 1989 Busch Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge. December 5, 1989 - January 21, 1990 Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles. February 9 - March 25, 1990 University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor. Albuquerque Museum, New Mexico.
  • Our Russians-Our Germans, pictures of the other 1800–2000 . Links-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-460-0 .
  • Christian Saehrendt: Art as an ambassador for an artificial nation. Studies on the role of the fine arts in the foreign cultural policy of the GDR. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-515-09227-2 .
  • Catherine Wilkins: Landscape imagery, politics, and identity in a divided Germany, 1968–1989 . Ashgate Publishing , 2013, ISBN 978-1-4094-4998-0 .
  • Doris Weilandt: rebel and romantic. In: Thomas Ziegler. 1947-2014. Painting - a look back. Zieglerart, 2016, ISBN 978-3-00-052467-7 .
  • Andreas Urs Sommer: Philosophical life as a picaresque novel. Thomas Ziegler and Friedrich Nietzsche. In: Thomas Ziegler: The FN loop. (= Considerations. Volume 1). Friedrich Nietzsche Foundation, Naumburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-9818356-0-1 .
  • Andreas Urs Sommer: Nietzsche and the consequences . JB Metzler-Verlag, 2017.
  • Barbara Straka: The ring in the ring. Thomas Ziegler - The FN loop. Serious and cheerful from the life of the fabulous Friedrich Nietzsche. In: Renate Reschke (ed.) Nietzsche research. Yearbook of the Nietzsche Society V., Vol. 24, Winkelmanns Antike, Nietzsche's criticism of classicism and its views into the future. De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2017.

Media contributions

  • Joachim Hellwig: The painter Thomas Ziegler . Defa documentary, 1988/89
  • Nadine Wojcik, P. Paul: Disappeared pictures: Thomas Ziegler . Deutsche Welle World September 27, 2010
  • Nadine Wojcik: Disappeared Images. Bernhard Heisig, Werner Tübke, Thomas Ziegler, Hartwig Ebersbach, Gerhard Richter . RBB Kulturradio September 29, 2010
  • Kathrin Valtin: The painter Thomas Ziegler . NDR television February 25, 2015

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Saehrendt: Art as an ambassador of an artificial nation. Studies on the role of the fine arts in the foreign cultural policy of the GDR. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2009.
  2. ↑ Doris Weilandt: Rebel and Romantic. Critical group pictures, unstable Soviet soldiers - with Thomas Ziegler an unusual artist died. In: new Germany. January 15, 2015, p. 14.


personal data
SURNAME Ziegler, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ziegler, Philipp Thomas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Limbach (Saxony)
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 2014
Place of death Mesh tape