Johannes Birkholzer - Original 1973 color lithograph "Landscape" - limit. edition 11/50 - signed - Sold

Original lithograph - 1973 - , signed and dated in pencil lower right, numbered 11/50 on the left. Sheet size 35 x 50 cm.


Johannes Birkholzer. He was born in Essen in 1931 and experienced the war years there. From 1952-59 he studied graphics and painting at the art academies in Freiburg and Düsseldorf, including with Otto Pankok and Otto Coester.

In the 1960s, Birkholzer worked with geometric patterns in abstract scenes. Later, more and more works were created in which the representational predominated. Graphics increasingly move into the artist's central field of vision. The romantic views of the Rhine of that time contrast with Birkholzer's sober, realistic observations. His works, which he increasingly produces as aquatint etchings, are shocking and show the sometimes frightening clarity of how far reality has already drawn its veil over the past. In his views of the Rhine, the artist shows the scars, destruction and architectural sins of a time that people caused and left behind and which in many places can no longer be repaired.

Roads and railway lines tear up the river bank, construction sites with technical structures dominate the landscape. Birkhölzer was not satisfied with owning an original print; he looked for the location on the Rhine or in the Rhine Valley, where the artist must have produced his view at the time. There Birkholzer created his current view, a mirror of the present.

Until his death in May 2016, Johannes Birkhölzer lived and worked in Wuppertal. His works are alarming reminders of the present, alongside the documents of contemporary witnesses from days gone by. When you look at them, they hardly leave any room for their artistic uniqueness; the dismay predominates too much.

(Rheintal.de)