Werner Wood

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Werner Holz, 1988

Werner Holz (born November 1, 1948 in Grünstadt (Palatinate); † August 8, 1991 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein ) was a German painter and graphic artist . His work mainly includes oil paintings, red chalk drawings, graphics and pictures made with mixed techniques.

Life

Werner Holz, son of Paul and Berta Holz, b. Mietzner, younger brother of the physicist Manfred Holz , grew up in Hettenleidelheim (Palatinate). His grandfather Heinrich Holz was a porcelain painter in an earthenware factory in neighboring Neuleiningen (Palatinate) and so he came into contact with painting as a child. During his childhood, atomic and hydrogen bomb tests took place all over the world and so “atomic mushrooms” were a first, permanent motif in Werner Holz's childish drawings. The danger of mankind being destroyed by man apparently played an important role in his world of thought early on and later shaped the subject of many of the painter's works. After completing his apprenticeship as a printer in Grünstadt (Palatinate), studying at the College of Graphics in Mainz , at the Graphic Academy in Munich and as an assistant at the Free Academy of Arts in Mannheim , he worked as a freelance artist in Frankenthal and Herxheim am Berg . Important study trips took him to Bruges , Ghent and Venice . Werner Holz was married and had three sons, Lukas, Mathias and Tobias Holz. His marriage later ended in divorce. In the last decade of his life, his life partner was Irene Briamonte, to whom he also bequeathed the artistic rights to his work.

In 1980, ARD television SWF broadcast the film “Art in Dialog” about the painter at work in Venice in dialogue with photographer Rainer F. Stocke. In connection with the record production "The Lamentations of Jeremiah" by Hans Oskar Koch, a film was made for SWF television in 1982 "When walls fall ..." and in 1985 the film "The Heirs of Hieronymus Bosch" was made (with: Neukirch, Hagen, Otfried H. Culmann , Hermann Hoormann, Gernot Rumpf , von Gugel), all three 45-minute films were produced by Eberhard Schulz. In 1989, the then K3 Kulturkanal in the southwest broadcast a film portrait of the artist by Franz-Josef Bettag. The last film recordings by Werner Holz could be seen in an article by Michael Burg in the K3 culture journal in 1992, where the exhibition “Between Worlds, Four Palatine Painters of the Fantastic (Hermann Hoormann, Wolfgang Blanke , FJ Bettag, W. Holz)” was reported . Werner Holz was friends with the well-known organist Wilhelm Krumbach , who musically framed many of the painter's exhibition openings. A deep friendship among artists connected him with the writer Walter Hilsbecher , of whom he illustrated two books and who wrote the small collection of poems “Airmail, in memoriam Werner Holz” after the painter's death.

In 1976, Holz was awarded the "Graphics Prize of the City of Frankenthal" and in 1978 he was the first to receive the Otto Ditscher Art Prize from the then Ludwigshafen / Rhein district ( Rhein-Pfalz-Kreis ).

Werner Holz died at the age of 42 in a hospital in Ludwigshafen am Rhein - just in a successful artistic career - of sepsis after a minor surgical procedure. Shortly before his death he had completed his last, larger painting, "Garden of Paradise". His final resting place is in Herxheim am Berg . His tomb, in which the only sculpture he created (Das Einhorn) was incorporated, was created by his friend, the sculptor Theo Rörig .

plant

His mostly small-scale painting was inspired by the works of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder . Neomanieristic pictorial fantasies and dream worlds, sometimes painted with the finest marten hair brush, are characteristic of Werner Holz. It is assigned to " Fantastic Realism ". He saw himself in the tradition of a more general "painting of the fantastic" that ran through many centuries . In some of his pictures z. B. Exact representations of plants and fruits, in the tradition of Giuseppe Arcimboldo , put together to associative picture elements. His works have been shown in numerous galleries and many national and international exhibitions and are in public and private collections.

He spends his childhood and youth in Hettenleidelheim , in a part of the Palatinate , whose nature is characterized by a wild, natural clay pits landscape with ponds and eruptions (the "earth chewing") and deep forests. These eruptions are reflected in many of his pictures, where z. B. Fools move towards the abyss or dance along the abyss. In addition to the people and fools on the edge of the abyss, the painter's works also focus on “foolish people as tightrope walkers”, just as the figure of Icarus is repeatedly depicted. All these figures symbolize the danger of a sudden fall from carelessness and soaring mankind. Werner Holz was also deeply rooted in his homeland, he felt himself to be a “ Palatinate painter ” and painted the Palatinate landscape in numerous pictures and motifs from the Palatinate appear in many other works.

The subject of Venice also occupies a large part of the painter's work . During several longer stays in the lagoon city, a large number of pictures with Venetian motifs were created, whereby, in addition to the uniqueness and beauty of the city, the aspect of possible destruction again played an important role for Werner Holz. In Venice he made friends with the Italian painter Ludovico de Luigi, whose particular painting technique related to the geometry of his Venice paintings found its way into Venice paintings made of wood.

The conservative humanist and moralist Werner Holz demonstrated in his works folly (personified by the fools in his pictures) as the antithesis of reason and insight. His painterly work therefore has a strong connection to the most famous and most successful German-language book before the Reformation, namely the late medieval moral satire "The Ship of Fools" by Sebastian Brant . It is therefore typical that in a number of Holz's paintings the literary Brant ship of fools is made visible, now painterly, also in different variants. The painter integrates the fool as a mediator in his picture statement in several ways. As a person who is too fixated on himself, he becomes a self-destructor, apparently walking carelessly on the abyss. The fool also embodies animal instincts, which can lead to spiritual and emotional decline, and finally Werner Holz also paints the fool as the powerless worldly wise man who accepts his fate and strives for redemption. Werner Holz himself once wrote: "Perhaps my pictures and drawings can be seen as" peepholes "into the world of the unspeakable, into a world in which the lightness of thought can be visualized without having to submit to the laws of everyday life." The arrogance of people who want to reach for the sun was a main theme in the painter's work in the 1980s, because Werner Holz created at least four larger oil paintings with the title " Icarus " during this time . He writes in his sketchbook: “The person who has forgotten to live as if he were a part of the world, of nature and not the unlimited ruler over the world and nature. He believes he can reach (fly) to infinity and forgets that his roots are deep in nature. "

The large oil painting “Triumph des Fools” (1977/78), also a self-portrait of the painter, depicted as a fool sitting in a “ship of fools”, was probably his most important painting. The sale of the plant at the end of the 1970s, forced for financial reasons, was associated with a serious life crisis for Werner Holz. He tried to recover from this crisis by creating a second, slightly modified version of the painting, which he worked on from 1978 to around 1985 and which he was able to keep in his studio.

Murals by the artist can be seen in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse on the wall of a historic building (corner of Klemmhof - Badstubengasse), in Bad Dürkheim in the inner courtyard of the "House of Catoir" and in Herxheim am Berg on his former studio at the "Tor zum Pfaffenhof".

Former atelier of Werner Holz: At the Pfaffenhoftor in Herxheim am Berg
Mural v. Werner Holz: "Fantastic Allegory of Neustadt ad Weinstrasse" in the old town of Neustadt ad Weinstrasse .

Works (selection from the main works)

  • Fratricide of Cain (colored pencil), 1972
  • The Daughters of Loth (pen drawing), 1973
  • The World Book, 1974
  • Vision, 1975
  • The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1975
  • Triumph of Mammon, 1975/77
  • Hamlet, graphic cassette, 1976
  • Promise of the Prophet Jonah, 1976
  • Paradise Lost ( English original title; transl.: "The lost paradise"), 1976
  • Gen Narragonia, 1976
  • Prophet of the Red Horses, 1976
  • Eva, 1976
  • The Lamentation of the Prophet Jeremiah, 1976
  • The prophecy of the Prophet Nahum, 1976/77
  • The resurrection, 1976/77
  • Luck, 1977
  • The transformed goddess, 1977
  • The Ship of Fools, 1977
  • Triumph of Time, 1977
  • Everyone, 1977
  • The golden calf, 1977
  • Fooling around, 1977
  • The ship of life, 1977/78 ( can be seen in the building of the district administration of the Rhein-Pfalz-Kreis in Ludwigshafen / Rhein )
  • Triumph of the Fool, 1977/78
  • The Triumph of the Fool, 1978–1985
  • The wheel of fortune, 1978
  • The Ship of Fools in the Labyrinth, 1978
  • The Fall Mask, 1978
  • The morning and the evening, 1978
  • The stranded ship of fools, 1978/79
  • The Speyer Carnival in the fight against the plague, 1978/79
  • The four seasons, 1978/79
  • The Ship of Melancholy, 1979
  • Venetian Visions, 1979
  • The Harlequin's Dream, 1979
  • The Venetian Horseman, 1979
  • Melancholy, 1979
  • Hope, 1979
  • Capriccio, 1979
  • The Venetian Comedy, 1979/80
  • Venetian melancholy, 1980
  • Memory, 1980
  • The Resurrection Stage, 1980
  • The Messenger of Time, 1981
  • Carmina Burana, 1981
  • Adam and Eve, 1981
  • The resurrection, 1981
  • Virgin and Unicorn, 1981
  • Carnival on the Ice, 1981
  • Dream bird in Venice, 1981
  • The festival of remembrance on the Narrenberg, 1981/82
  • The Architect of the Four Elements, 1982
  • Triptych on Jeremiah, 1982
  • Lamentations of Jeremiah (Nine Graphics), 1982
  • From the tightrope walker's dreams, oil, 1983
  • In Search of the Philosopher's Stone, Oil, 1983
  • Icarus, 1983
  • The day and the night, 1984
  • View into paradise, 1984
  • The Riddle of Shrovetide, 1984
  • The Angel from the Stars, 1984
  • The Card Player, 1984
  • Icarus, 1984/85
  • Icarus, 1985
  • The game, 1985
  • The Ark, 1985
  • On the evening of Mardi Gras, 1985
  • Mardi Gras of the Seekers, 1985
  • Architect of the Four Elements II, 1985
  • Johannes auf Patmos (lithograph), 1985
  • Metamorphoses, portfolio with six graphics and texts by Walter Hilsbecher , 1986
  • The Ship of Fools, 1986
  • Island of Illusions, 1986
  • Icarus, 1987
  • Atlantis, 1986/87
  • Theatrum mundi, 1986/87
  • Isle of Resurrection, 1987
  • Bird of the soul, 1989/90
  • Apparition or Venetian Dream, 1989/90
  • Magical Palatinate Landscapes, 1990
  • Venetian Dream, 1990
  • Venetian acrobats, 1990/91
  • Paradise Garden, 1991

literature

  • Gustav René Hocke : Ship of Fools in the Labyrinth, On the work of the painter Werner Holz. Published by the Volkshochschule Landkreis Ludwigshafen / Rhein, VHS-Galerie, 1979.
  • Antonio Briamonte, Werner Holz, Rainer F. Stocke: Art in dialogue: two German artists see Venice. Publication under the patronage of the Lions Club Frankenthal / Pfalz, 1980.
  • Hans Blinn, Hartmut Frien: Artists of the Palatinate 1980/82. VPK Verlag Pfälzer Kunst, Landau id Pfalz, 1982.
  • Rainer F. Stocke: Werner Holz's hidden world of symbols. Photo folder, 1981.
  • HO Koch: Lamentations of Jeremiah, record cassette with 9 graphics by Werner Holz. Unisono Verlag, 1982.
  • Wood, Werner; Stocke, Rainer F .; Beckerle, Monika; Art in Dialogue II, A magical image of the Palatinate, Schölles-Druck, Hessheim 1983.
  • Walter Hilsbecher : Flight of the Owls, Poetic Dream Pictures with 20 illustrations by Werner Holz, Garamond Verlag, Grünstadt, 1984.
  • Heinz, Karl; Presentation of W. Holz in the book: Im Banne der Limburg, Garamond Verlag, Grünstadt, 1984.
  • Walter Hilsbecher, Gustav R. Hocke, Eberhard Schulz: Werner wood painting of the fantastic. Pfaffentor Edition, 1985.
  • Clemens Jöckle : Werner Holz (1948–1991): The ship of life or the art of lifting a curtain. - Ill. In: Ludwigshafen ‹Landkreis›: Heimatjahrbuch. 10, 1994, pp. 83-86.
  • Clemens Jöckle: The Ship of Fools on the Abyss - on the pictorial metaphor by Werner Holz, “Labyrinthine Imagery” / [Kunstverein Bad Dürkheim]. - Bad Dürkheim, 1998.
  • Karl-Heinz Rothenberger, Karl Scherer: Franz Staab , Jürgen Keddigkeit (eds.): Palatinate history. Volume 2, Institute for Palatinate History and Folklore, Kaiserslautern 2002, p. 359.
  • Eric Hass: An artist and his wine label - Werner Holz from Herxheim am Berg: An exotic among painters. In: Dürkheim ‹Landkreis›: Home year book of the Bad Dürkheim district. 25, 2007, pp. 128-132.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wood, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Grünstadt (Palatinate)
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 1991
Place of death Ludwigshafen am Rhein