Thitz
Biography
| 1962 | Born December 30 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany | |
| 1983-1989 | Studies in painting under Professor K. R. H. Sonderborg at the Staatlichen Akademie der bildenden Künste Stuttgart. | |
| 1985 | First Tütenbilder (Bag-Picture) | |
| 1989-90 | Studies with Professor Pijuan at the Facultad de bellas Artes Universidad de Barcelona. | |
| 1990 | Stipend from the Deutschen Akademischen Austauschdienst (DAAD) to Spain | |
| 1993 | Colaboration with IGBK internationale Gesellschaft der bildenden Künste Bonn | |
| 1994 | Encouragement Prise of the Verbands bildender Künstler Württemberg VBKW |
Solo Exhibitions (Selection)
| 2012 |
| |
| 2011 | Kunsthalle Arnstadt | |
| 2011 | Galerie Rothamel, Frankfurt am Main | |
| 2010 | Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau (Katalog) | |
| 2010 | Museum Herakleidon, Athen | |
| 2010 | Münsterlandmuseum Burg Vischering | |
| 2009 | Museu de Arte, Londrina, Brasilien | |
| 2009 | Kunstmuseum Schorndorf | |
| 2009 | Galerie Rothamel Erfurt | |
| 2009 | Kulturraum Speyer | |
| 2008 | Cultural Centre of the City of Athens | |
| 2008 | Museum Goch | |
| 2008 | Museum Kulturverein Rottenburg | |
| 2008 | Artdeco Galerie, Basel | |
| 2008 | Palais Liechtenstein - Forum für zeitgenössische Kunst Feldkirch | |
| 2008 | Galerie Rothamel Frankfurt | |
| 2007 | Kulturraum Speyer | |
| 2007 | Alp Galleries, New York | |
| 2007 | Miami Children's Museum | |
| 2006 | Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, "Thitz-Gemalte Städte" (Katalog) | |
| 2006 | Galerie Rothamel, Erfurt | |
| 2006 | "Thitz" Galerie Alex Schlesinger, Zürich | |
| 2006 | Museum Offenburg | |
| 2006 | Miami Children'S Museum (Katalog) | |
| 2005 | "Thitz - Malerei und Arbeiten auf Papier" Galerie Rothamel, Erfurt | |
| 2005 | Gallery Angela Dikeoulia, Athen | |
| 2005 | Villa Claudia, Feldkirch, Österreich | |
| 2005 | New Pop Festival, Baden Baden | |
| 2004 | Museum Kunsthaus Grenchen, Schweiz (Katalog) | |
| 2004 | Galerie Alex Schlesinger, Zürich | |
| 2004 | Museum Kempten (Katalog) | |
| 2004 | Deutsches Konsulat in New York (Katalog) | |
| 2004 | Galerie del Mese Fischer, Meisterschwanden, Schweiz | |
| 2004 | Alp Galleries, New York | |
| 2003 | Kulturdezernat Feldkirch, Österreich (Katalog) | |
| 2002 | Museum Siegen (Katalog) | |
| 2002 | Museum Gogh (Katalog) | |
| 2002 | Alp Galleries, New York | |
| 2002 | Gurneys Inn, Montauk, NY | |
| 2002 | "Welttütenkonferenz" Städtische Galerie, Ostfildern | |
| 2001 | Museum Waiblingen | |
| 2001 | Galerie der Stadt Wendlingen | |
| 2001 | German House, New York (Publikation im Flatiron Magazin) | |
| 2000 | "Thitz – Tüten Museum" Museum Goch, Goch |
Collections (Selektion)
Klingspor Museum, OffenbachMuseo novella de Arte Contemporaneo, Barcelona
Museu de Arte de Londrina, Brasilien
Museum Frieder Burda, Baden Baden
Museum Goch
Museum Grenchen
Museum im Ritterhaus, Offenburg
Museum Rastatt
Museum Siegen
Museum Waiblingen
Museum Wuerth, Künzelsau
Collections Altana Pharma, American Dream World, BW Bank, Deutsche Bank, Dr. August Oetker, Landtag Stuttgart, Leitz, Secorvo, Stadtsparkasse Baden-Baden
Collections of the cties of Athens, Barcelona, Boeblingen, Innsbruck, Stuttgart
Art saves the world
Travel by artists has a long tradition. The work of generations ofartists has been inspired by exotic impressions and distant lands.
Whether the fascinating colours of the Orient that Delacroix orMatisse encountered in Morocco, Goethe’s ’Italian Journey’, or the impressionsof New York skyscraper canyons into which Rudolf Schoofs first ventured in the1970s — new and exotic impressions have always changed and creativelyinfluenced the artist.
For the painter Thitz, too, his travels have been an inexhaustiblesource of inspiration for his global pictures and cityscapes. For many years hehas been repeatedly drawn to the metropolises of India, America, and Africa.The impressions he brings from afar find their expression in his largecityscapes. Even though characteristic topographical features occur over andagain, his real topic is people and how they live together. The lifeblood ofhis pictures is dialogue. A great deal happens in his cities and landscapes. Weenter a colourful tangle of buildings, cars, all sorts of strange things, and,naturally, people
— people of every ilk, but always reduced to the essential. They areslim figures who signal their wishes to their interlocutors with clear gestures.The viewer rapidly loses himself in the innumerable stories that Thitz alsorelates when talking about his pictures. He knows exactly what is going on —who with whom and why.
Is it a dream world he transports us to? We are reminded of theflying horses and people of a Marc Chagall. Thitz, too, is a big storyteller.He can characterise people and their emotions with sparing pictorial means. Thelovingly painted particulars show how much the artist can go into detailwithout really being true to detail. At times his technique resemblescaricature, and he can accurately portray a personality with a minimum ofmeans.
Drawing is the stylistic key to his pictures. The Danish painter K.R. H. Sonderborg, under whom Thitz studied at the Stuttgart Academy, had greatinfluence on the young artist. His vital brushstroke, his eye for Americangestural painting, as well as his metropolitan cityscapes are the basis forThitz’s technique in painting and drawing. His swift stroke is characteristicof the Thitzian world, including his most recent paintings and drawings.
But comparison shows that painting is not a formalist game for him.His world is one of people and communication. His pictures reflect our present— sometimes more so than suits us. The population of his cities is typicallydiverse. Cultures come together, looking down astonished from their high-risewindows. Not always do they find someone to communicate with; they remainalone, gazing sadly at us. The cities that Thitz portrays are covered by adense web of lines and colours. They reflect a speed of life and interactionthat increasingly determines our being, often without our awareness.
In recent years our daily lives have speeded up enormously; the tempoon our information highways has long since ceased to be measured in seconds.Nowadays nanoseconds decide on the DAX or Dow Jones. Personality profiles aredesigned and defined by computer programs. People are no longer needed for thepurpose — no interlocutors, no dialogue. Our computer input is so gigantic thatcomputeraided
networking of this information now determines our reality much morethan we suspect.
In this world, cultures meet, megacities grow, and a self-learningcommunication system spans the entire globe.
This is the present Thitz has been portraying for years. But heproduces no dark visions. His pictures are complex, showing the fullambivalence of reality. They hold up a mirror to the speed and complexity, thecoexistence, sadness and loneliness of people — but also to the diversity andnew opportunities that cheek-by-jowl cultures offer.
In the 1994 ’Chabola City’, a shabby hut becomes a palace growing skyward,which has more in common with Cologne Cathedral than with the poor quarters onthe outskirts of our cities. Thitz lends dignity to the forgotten slums, socuriously deserted.
Our reality is ambivalent. Appearances are always deceptive; theartist sets out to expose them. ’Puschkinallee‘, a 2010 Berlin picture, iscomparatively calm. An autumnal mood pervades the visual web. And embedded inthe fine branching of the trees we discover messages from the artist. Banalphrases, echoes of people in the urban space: ‘wisdom’, ‘artist cell phone’,‘global’, ‘freedom’, or ‘prosperity 6000 km’. Viewers hesitate, look forexplanations in the picture, and are left alone with their endeavours. Thitzdoes not resolve the puzzle of his pictures. The world as he sees it is toocomplicated, too complex for a one-dimensional explanation. Thus the phrase‘Art saves the world’ from the same picture is wishful thinking, a vision, awonderful idea. We write our own story about it.
And, of course, there are the bags, Thitz’s ‘unique sellingproposition’. The bag is his trademark, and to this day it naturally plays animportant role. It is a surface for his painting, an important component of hiscollages, and, over and again, a herald from foreign lands and cultures. Withthe bag, the artist travels the world; he finds it everywhere, in China, inJapan, in the USA. The messages it brings reflect the colourfulness anddiversity of our world and the people in it. The bag stands for the world ofconsumption and passes on messages. It conceals secrets, revealing only what wewant others to see.
The perspective on the world provided by the painter Thitz is a veryprivate one; yet it is borne by a vision that ‘art saves the world’.
We would dearly love to believe it.
Stephan Mann
Director of the Museum Goch
