Walter Herzog (graphic designer)

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Walter Herzog

Walter Herzog (born September 20, 1936 in Dresden ) is a German draftsman and etcher . He lives and works in Berlin.

biography

Walter Herzog was born in Dresden in 1936. In 1945 he experienced the destruction of Dresden in the center of the city. After the bombing, he grew up in a rural suburb of the city. For political reasons, he was refused entry to high school. As a way out, he completed an apprenticeship as a mason as a prerequisite for studying at a technical college in Görlitz from 1953 to 1956. During this time he attended drawing courses with the sculptor Etha Richter . He then studied architecture at the TH Dresden , combined with painting and graphics with Georg Nerlich . 1960–1962, Herzog worked as an architect in Dresden while simultaneously engaged in informal painting. From 1963 he lived as an architect in Berlin. Here he worked on buildings in the center (including a television tower foot surround with water features).

In 1971 he made his first etchings. In 1973 the first participation in an exhibition took place in the gallery on Sachsenplatz in Leipzig. In 1974 he became a member of the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR . His first solo exhibition took place this year in the Winckelmann Museum in Stendal. In 1980 he ended his parallel activity as an architect in order to devote himself exclusively to his artistic work. In 1983 the graphic cassette "Harzreise im Winter" was published by Verlag der Kunst . At the same time, his wife, the architect Christine Herzog, took over the printing of his etchings. A total of 230 solo exhibitions had taken place up to 2016.

Artistic work

Walter Herzog found an unmistakable artistic expression in modern visual art . His affinity for Giovanni Battista Piranesi , Hercules Seghers and the romantics of the 19th century is clear. The references become apparent not only thematically (groups of trees, rocks, ruins, stairs, river and tree landscapes), especially in the detailed etching technique . Yet his work is not a mirror of the past; it bears the unmistakable signs of an artistic signature from the 20th / 21st centuries. Century. Walter Herzog is referred to as the "representative of a poetically condensed romantic- sensualistic realism ". His imagery is therefore not just an image, but also a metaphor and at the same time a projection space for contemplating transience, life and death.

After experimental attempts in all directions, the decision was quickly made in favor of the art of etching. In the first phase of his work, his work was dominated by a view of nature that was heightened into the fantastic. Mythological figures, anthropomorphic rocky landscapes or eccentrically curved trees should convey a tense examination of nature, people and the symbolic. The initial experience of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains (1972) led him to a more realistic topic. In addition, there was the processing of a first big trip to Italy (1978), which gave his work decisive thematic impulses and led to the orientation towards antiquity with its overgrown rock rubble, ruins, statues , grottos and olive groves . This attitude determines his entire work, which is also characterized by silence and a melancholy mood. The technique was refined and the composition continued to aim at compression. The breadth of variation in his special topic increased in scope and importance.

After 2000, large-format autonomous pen drawings enriched his work with motifs comparable to etchings. The dense drawing technique remained, but the more delicate stroke of the pen created a more atmospheric effect. The view often goes far or brings rock and tree formations to an oppressive close view. Numerous depictions of animals , portraits and still lifes were added. Walter Herzog's complete graphic work shows an astonishing continuity and creative density and is gathered in four separate catalog raisonnés (up to 2008).

Solo exhibitions (selection)

Works owned by museums and public collections

Literature (selection)

  • Nathalia Laue: Herzog, Walter . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 72, de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023177-9 , p. 465.
  • Walter Herzog - Etchings. Complete directory 1971–1982. Edited by Max Kunze. With texts by Gabriele Muschter, Gerald Heres and Jörg Sperling. Winckelmann Society, Stendal 1984 (Artist Compendium of the Winckelmann Society, Volume IV)
  • Walter Herzog - The brook flows to the sea - Landscape and poems with etchings. Edited by Manfred Schmidt, Kinderbuchverlag Berlin - DDR 1987, ISBN 3-358-00900-9
  • Walter Herzog - Indulges in people's loud lust. Graphic suite with poems by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff. Edited by Manfred Schmidt. With a text by Edwin Kratschmer. Edition q, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-86124-238-9
  • Walter Herzog - Landscapes. Catalog raisonné of the etchings 1983–1997. With texts by Walter Herzog, Eckhart Krombholz, Jörg Sperling, Gunter Nimmich and Eckard Wagner. HW Fichter Edition, Frankfurt am Main 1998
  • Walter Herzog - Landscapes, catalog raisonné of the etchings 1998–2002 and selected drawings between 1981–2002. With texts by Bernd Wolff, Rita Joreck, Rudolf Kober and Sybille Badstübner-Gröger. Jüttners Verlagbuchhandlung , Wernigerode 2002, ISBN 3-910157-11-4
  • Walter Herzog - Landscape & Shape. Catalog raisonné of the etchings 2002–2008 and selected drawings. With texts by Astrid Volpert, Marie Luise Rohde, Nathalia Laue, Holger Teschke and Günter Coufal, Jüttners Verlagbuchhandlung , Wernigerode 2008, ISBN 3-910157-14-9
  • Walter Herzog - graphics and drawings, edited by Gerd Lindner, Panorama Museum Bad Frankenhausen 2011. With texts by Gunter Nimmich, Gerd Lindner, Helmut Borsch-Suppan, Volkhard Böhm, Maren Kroneck, Edwin Kratschmer, Cornelia Nowak and Nathalia Laue, ISBN 978 -3-938049-21-1
  • Walter Herzog - In “Figurative Focus”, Dialogue between 7 realistic european artists. Sophienholm (near Copenhagen) 2014, with text by Robin d´ArcyShillcock, ISBN 978-87-92079-17-6
  • Walter Herzog - natural relic and art construct - exhibition of the graphics museum Stiftung Schreiner Bad Steben 2015. With text by Linn Kroneck

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ G. Lindner, exhibition catalog, Frankenhausen 2015
personal data
SURNAME Duke, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German graphic designer and architect
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden