Karl Bohrmann

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Overview

Trees blue, black, 1998

Oil crayon on paper
8,1 × 11,7 cm
Estate stamp on verso
Provenance:
Karl Bohrmann estate

About the artist

Karl Bohrmann was born in Mannheim on 29 October 1928. He began drawing and painting as a schoolboy. He was fascinated by works by Caspar David Friedrich and Carl Gustav Carus at the Kunsthalle in Mannheim. Bohrmann met the artist Rudolf Scharpf (1919-2014), who lived in Ludwigshafen a. Rh. and whom he later described as his real teacher. After studying at the Saarbrücken School of Arts and Crafts (1947-48) under Karl Kunz and Boris Kleint and at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts (1948-49) under Willi Baumeister, Bohrmann worked as a freelance artist in the Palatinate Forest, where he set up a studio in the Morschbacher Hof with his wife, the artist Maria Reuter. In 1952, Bohrmann received a two-year work scholarship from the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and moved into the studio house set up for this purpose in Koblenz. Here he met the sculptor Michael Croissant and his wife, the sculptor Christa von Schnitzler. He produced almost exclusively etchings. Bohrmann returned to Ludwigshafen a. Rh. in 1954. While travelling in Italy (1953, 1954), Bohrmann encounters the work of Giorgio Morandi, which has a lasting influence on him. In 1957 he was honoured with the Baden-Württemberg Youth Art Prize and in 1958 with the Palatinate Prize. Due to his friendship with Michael Croissant, Bohrmann moved to Munich in 1959, where he made the acquaintance of Gerhard von Graevenitz. In Munich, the gallery owner Günther Franke included Bohrmann in his programme. A trip to Paris leads to an encounter with drawings by Alberto Giacometti. Bohrmann enthusiastically begins to devote more time to drawing. On a trip to Greece in 1962, which lasted several months, Bohrmann discovered colour and painting. He created watercolour drawings in a fine, Art Informel-influenced, colourful web of lines, suggesting landscapes and the bodies of slaughtered animals, as Bohrmann had observed them on his trip. In 1962, Bohrmann was awarded the Rhineland-Palatinate Prize, in 1964 the Lugano Prize and in 1969 the German Prize at the Mostra Biennale Internazionale della Grafica in Florence. After travelling to New York in 1969, he created his first large-format canvases. At the beginning of the 1970s, Bohrmann turned his attention to the theme of figure and space in his drawings. Watercolour pencil drawings of interiors with nudes or tables and lamps, which suggest the studio situation, are created. In the winter semester of 1970/71, Bohrmann accepted a guest lectureship at the Städel School in Frankfurt am Main, and from the winter semester of 1971/72 he was head of teaching at the Städel Evening School. Bohrmann primarily teaches nude drawing. In 1972 Bohrmann moves to Frankfurt am Main. He buys a house in Amsterdam, which he lives in during the semester holidays. Bohrmann begins to explore photography, experimenting with photo collage and collage. In 1977, Bohrmann was represented at documenta 6 with seven large-format, watercolour drawings. Teaching at the Städel Evening School paralysed Bohrmann; he developed his real creativity during the semester break in Amsterdam. In 1980, Bohrmann gave up his position at the Städel School and moved to Amsterdam. The Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus holds the first retrospective of Bohrmann's work. In 1982, Bohrmann is honoured with the Villa Romana Prize. In Florence, he begins to devote himself intensively to painting. The series of paintings on nettle begins. It combines drawing and painting in a sensitive way and contains Bohrmann's repertoire of motifs developed up to that point, such as the house, the interior, the window, the nude, the landscape and celestial phenomena. Bohrmann's strokes became more vigorous with his works on nettle. He uses the oil crayon alongside the oil crayon. At the same time, he drew and created collages. After his return to Germany, Bohrmann settled in Düsseldorf in 1983 and in Cologne in 1986. From 1985, drawing, together with collage, once again became Bohrmann's most important means of artistic expression. Varying repetitions of the "objects" of his "iconography" characterise Bohrmann's work in the 1990s: his prominent, highly esteemed series such as the "Nude with Red Coat", the "Red Figure", Trees, Red Trees, Steamers, Ladders, Still Lifes, "Letters to Vienna" and the Celestial Apparitions - works of the highest poetic sensitivity and magical suggestion.
Karl Bohrmann's motifs are primarily determined by sensory impressions and the perception of his living environment. The artist does not always process these directly, but sometimes takes them up years later from memory. The impressive and wonderful group of works of trees, for example, is based on the view from a window of his studio in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel, where he lived from 1983-86 and looked out onto a row of poplars opposite. From his recollections and the visualisation of the sensations associated with the sight of the trees, Bohrmann began to work intensively on this subject around 1990 and created series of considerable variety on this theme until 1998.
The series of trees created in 1998 includes "Trees, blue, black": dense rows of trees with narrow crowns reminiscent of poplars, which Bohrmann primarily painted in dark shades of blue and black. Bohrmann rarely hints at landscape in this series, and then only as a coloured line indicating the sky or horizon. As is characteristic of his drawings, the artist also uses previously used, labelled paper, such as fragments of letters, in this series. The expression of the series "Trees, blue, black" results primarily from the colours. These combine with twilight and night and lend the works a calm, contemplative expression.