Uwe Wittwer

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Uwe Wittwer, Ruine , 2005, oil on canvas, 70 × 60 cm
Uwe Wittwer, Ruine , 2007, watercolor, 180 × 150 cm
Uwe Wittwer, double portrait with dog , 2007, watercolor, 180 × 150 cm

Uwe Wittwer (born August 4, 1954 in Zurich ) is a Swiss artist . He lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland . His working techniques include watercolor , oil painting , inkjet printing , printmaking, and video .

Live and act

Uwe Wittwer is self-taught . He spent his school days in Zurich. From 1974 to 1977 he studied at the higher technical school for social work in Bern . In 1979 he rented his first studio . As a youth worker in Zurich, he was involved in the 80s movement. His early work can be described as expressively abstract painting . The change to representational painting took place in the mid- 1980s . His first solo exhibition took place in 1983 at the Walcheturm gallery in Zurich. In 1989 he received the London studio grant from the Binz 39 Foundation (Zurich). In 1994 he was in Paris at the Cité international des arts (grant from the Canton of Zurich). In the same year he received the Federal Art Scholarship . In 1998 Wittwer's solo exhibition took place in the Helmhaus Zurich , where he showed his digitally processed photo material for the first time, which has been part of his work since 1990.

"Wittwer is a painter with a limited, with a ritualized vocabulary" . He limits the spectrum of his motifs to a few subjects: landscapes, cities, still lifes and portraits. In the course of time, Uwe Wittwer's range of topics is reduced to three main strands: idyll , reference works and the issue of violence.

The reference works relate primarily to interior views and still lifes by the classical masters of the Netherlands, such as Pieter de Hooch or Willem Kalf . The subject of violence shows Wittwer in "leisure situations" of American soldiers in the Vietnam War , ruins of bombed cities, burned out single-family houses. The Internet is an important source of images for him.

Uwe Wittwer deals with the “question of what a picture is” and the question of how memory changes pictures.

From 1998 to 2000 Uwe Wittwer was a guest lecturer at the University of Witten-Herdecke in Germany.

In 2008 Wittwer was included in the list of the 50 most important artists in Switzerland.

In 2013 two of his works were added to the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York.

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions
  • Kunsthalle Bern , CH (1991)
  • Museum Schloss Morsbroich, Kunstverein Leverkusen, D (1997)
  • Helmhaus Zurich , CH (1998)
  • University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh PA, USA (2000)
  • Fabian & Claude Walter, (catalog), Basel (2000)
  • Fabian & Claude Walter, (catalog), Basel (2002)
  • Fabian & Claude Walter, Swimming at South China Beach, catalog, Zurich (2005)
  • Art Museum Solothurn , CH (2005)
  • Ludwig Forum for International Art , Aachen, D (2005)
  • Cohan and Leslie Gallery, New York (2008)
  • Nolan Judin, Berlin (2009), Fred Jahn, Munich (2009)
  • Haunch of Venison, London (2009)
  • Lullin + Ferrari, Zurich (2010)
  • Haunch of Venison, London (2011)
  • Void, Derry (2012)
  • SMAC Gallery, Cape Town (2012)
  • Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, UK (2013)
  • Galerie Judin, Berlin (2013)
  • Lullin + Ferrari, Zurich (2013)
  • Parafin, London (2015)
  • Lullin + Ferrari, Zurich (2017)
  • Galerie Judin, Berlin (2018)
  • Gallery Peter Kilchmann, Zurich (2019)
  • Kunsthaus Grenchen , CH (2019)
Group exhibitions
  • Crime scene London , Galerie Schübbe, Düsseldorf, D (1996)
  • The sharpness of the blur , Kunstmuseum Solothurn (1998)
  • Swiss Contemporary Art , Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul (1998)
  • Make land! , Stadtmuseum Siegburg , D (2000)
  • L'Imagine ritrovata Museo cantonale d'Arte , Lugano, CH (2002)
  • Big is beautiful Musée d'art et d'histoire de la Ville de Neuchâtel, CH (2002)
  • Flower Myth - from Vincent van Gogh to Jeff Koons , Fondation Beyeler , Basel, CH (2005)
  • Reprocessing Reality , PS1 MoMA , New York (2006)
  • Fade Away and Radiate , Cohan and Leslie Gallery, New York (2007)
  • Mythologies , Haunch of Venison Burlington Gardens, London (2009)
  • EXHIBITIONISM: The Art of Display , Courtauld Institute of Art , London (2010)
  • Watercolor , Tate Britain , London (2011)
  • The Observer , Haunch of Venison, Eastcastle Street, London (2012)
  • The double picture , Kunstmuseum Solothurn (2013)
  • Abraham. Ovid. The other , with Slawomir Elsner , Lullin + Ferrari, Zurich (2015)
  • The eyes of pictures - portraits from Fragonard to Dumas , Museum Langmatt, Baden (2017)
  • Works by ... , Gallery Peter Kilchmann, Zurich (2018)
  • Journeys with 'The Waste Land' , Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry (2018)
  • Without expiry date , Kunstmuseum Bern , CH (2019)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kraft, Martin: Biographical Lexicon of Swiss Art. Swiss Institute for Art Research, Neue Zürcher Zeitung publishing house, Zurich / Lausanne 1998.
  2. ↑ a b Lienhard, Marie-Louise: Uwe Wittwer. Helmhaus Zurich, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-906396-42-8 .
  3. ^ A b c Sarah Kent: Public Pictures, Private Lives . in: Uwe Wittwer - Hail and Snow. Haunch of Venison, Zurich / London 2007, ISBN 978-1-905620-17-3 .
  4. ↑ a b Harald Kunde: Conjectures About What Is Possible . in: Uwe Wittwer: Geblendet / Dazzled. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-936636-56-7 .
  5. ↑ Also called Appropriation Art . Vögele, Christoph: The double image - Uwe Wittwer and the Appropriation Art. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2005, page 11
  6. ^ Adrian Nicole LeBlanc : Sidelines . in: Uwe Wittwer - Blended / Dazzled. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2005.
  7. ^ Stegmann, Markus: Uwe Wittwer - Monsun I – III. Édition Idéal, Zurich 2005.
  8. ↑ Tobler, Konrad: Uwe Wittwer - Blended / Dazzled. Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-936636-56-7 , page 26.
  9. ↑ Tobler, Konrad: Painting as a memory forward. 'Sample Book II', Gallery Fabian & Claude Walter , Basel / Zurich 2002
  10. ↑ Website of the University of Witten-Herdecke: Activity report University of Witten / Herdecke 99/00  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF). Retrieved June 7, 2010.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.uni-wh.de  
  11. ^ The Swiss business magazine : Artist rating 08: Swiss champions. Balance 11/08, June 6, 2008. Accessed June 7, 2010.
  12. ^ The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collections. Retrieved March 28, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Wittwer, Uwe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss artist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich