Adolf Bierbrauer

Adolf Bierbrauer (* July 26, 1915 in Düsseldorf - September 2, 2012 in Ratingen) was a German conceptual artist, painter and sculpturer. He is known for his "hypnosis paintings" and "somnambulistic paintings" as well as for his sculptures.

Adolf Bierbrauer, Self-portrait, oil on canvas on hard board relined, 28 cm x 21,5 cm,1939

Life

Adolf Bierbrauer, Desperate Search of the Inner Face, somnambulistic work, Acryic on canvas, 160 cm x 200 cm, 1999

Adolf Bierbrauer grew up with two sisters, Marianne and Gisela, in the Glücksburger street in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel. His father was manager of the ironworks Association in Düsseldorf.

During his high school years Bierbrauer went through a deep personal crisis. In 1925 his piano teacher detected him the philosophical work of Rudolf Steiner. In 1930 Bierbrauer produced his first still life. One year later, first figurative drawings followed. In the age of eighteen he performed in puplic as piano soloist. He also produced numerous portraits of people from his neighborhood. In 1934 he traveled to the Goetheanum in Dornach (Switzerland) to study the works of Rudolf Steiner. In 1935, he began a study of medicine at the University of Marburg. In 1937 he moves to Freiburg to continue his studies. In 1939, he continued in the study in Jena and at the Medical Academy in Düsseldorf. From 1940-1942 he served in military service in France.

1942 Bierbrauer was called back to Düsseldorf due to the lack of troops doctors there in World War II, in order to make here his medical state examination. He finished his studies with a doctorate in 1943. In January 1945 he was sent as military doctor to the Eastern Front. He was captured in Wroclaw and transported to Transcaucasia (Mingitschaur) to work as a roadbuilder and concrete worker as Russian prisoner of war.

During his imprisonment, on behalf of the prisoner-of-war camp management Bierbrauer painted documentary images of geological investigations of the terminal moraines. The prisoners also worked on archaeological excavations of medean graves. Biebrauer opposed the supports and retained some drawings. His paintings then was forbiddden. Instead he was ordered to create portraits of the guards.

In 1949, he came back to Düsseldorf and started as a volunteer physician in Hamburg at the University Hospital. From 1951 to 1953 he worked as psychotherapist at the 2nd Medical Academy in Düsseldorf, specializing in hypnosis treatments. The first hypnosis paintings emerged. His public engagement against electroshock therapy and insulin shock treatments lead to his release from hospital in 1953/1954.

In the summer semester, he attended the class "monumental painting and wall painting" under the direction of Otto Gerster at the Kölner Werkschulen. He applied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where he is rejected.

In 1954 he received the circular medical certificate to establish himself as a general medical practitioner. Bierbrauer now specialized on nervous disorders and psychosomatic disorders. He enhanced the therapies applying also hypnosis.

After 1960, the first somnambulistic paintings emerge. A heart attack in 1965 forced Bierbrauer to end working as a doctor. In the year 1973, he declared himself to be a freelance artist and started painting lessons for children at his home. These lessions later became the first Waldorf kindergarten in Düsseldorf. Bierbrauer also worked as a pianist in Waldorf schools. In 1974 he applied again at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he remained for nearly two years. At the same time he attended lectures of philosophy at Heinz Rudolf at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.

Starting in 1990, Bierbrauer started which art he calls Müllkunst (trash art). 1998 Bierbrauer moved to the anthroposophically oriented Heinrich-Zschokke Senior house in Düsseldorf-Gerresheim, that he also initiated. In 2000, his works have been presented to the general public during the presentation of his monography at the NRW Forum for the first time. Bazon Brock and Gabriele Lohberg, Director of the Europäische Kunstakademie Trier (European Academy of Fine Arts Trier) held the introduction speeches.(1)

Life in anthroposophic Senior home became intolerable to him. During unannounced renovations in his care rooms artworks are destroyed.(2) He decided in 2006 to change senior house in the age of 91 years and moved to the Kasierwerther Diakonie, Ratingen.

In the year 2012 Bierbrauer personally witnessed his hypnosis works in the exhibition "The Great," at the Museum Kunst Palast Düsseldorf. In the autumn of the same year Bierbrauer died of heart failure.(3)

Work

Adolf Bierbrauer,the elephantine tantrum, Bronze sculpture, 2002, Vol. 30

Bierbrauer's key works are his hypnosis pictures from the early 1950s and his somnambulistic works created in the last five decades, as well as his sculptures out of different materials.

The focus of his work is the human being. In his the early work pure representations of people, such as portraits and nudes can be found. As he approached in the course of his activities as an artist, physician and psychotherapist, the hidden content of the human psyche determined his works.

Bierbrauer painted the hypnosis images after stories and pictures from his patients in trance. They were created after the end of World War II created until the early 1950s. The images based on Bierbrauers knowledge to find ways to help patients to developed their experiences through war and personal past traumas to free the hypnosis and the narration behind their images, in which he told these pictures were painted for the patients, in order to discuss connected with them. Like this, Bierbrauers were not only able to help his patients, but to make entirely new works of art through the assistance of the patient. In his understanding the artist can be a healer of the sick individual in the society. With these works he had been one of the pioneers of the conceptual art of the sixties in Europe.

These hypnosis images compared Bazon Brock a few years ago with the meaning of the Joseph Beuys performed washing feet. Bazon Brock wrote in his book "Der Barbar als Kulturheld" (The barbarian as a cultural hero): "The results of these images that emerged then, are ultimately that important because they are artistic formally on the absolute highest level of its time. There is nothing comparable in the '50s."(5)

For Bierbrauer, since the late 1960s somnambulistic work has many parallels to works by informal artists as Emilio Vedova and Emil Schumacher. Their technique and way of expression are comparable also to the works of the abstract expressionism as by Jackson Pollock or Jean-Michel Basquiat. Bierbrauer, trained by the hypnosis of his patients, began in this period to abstract from the patient's images and now betook himself into a somnambulistic, in a daydream-like state in order to access as an artist to his very own self. These images he created until the end of his life, impressed by the interaction between the "incorporation" of others in the interplay with the search for his own identity.

Also noteworthy are his sculptures captivate already started in the 1950s and to this day by their expressiveness and their ingenuity and their own design language and title determination. In his bronze figures such as the elephantine tantrum from 2001 he used an expressive free, unbound to the concrete form design, which received its informal expression which is increased by the titles-finding. They appear as trash-like sculptures, mostly composed of material remains (see also Arte povera), connected with glue, metal wires and tinfoil.

Gallery Samples Hypnosis paintings

Art market

Adolf Bierbrauer's works are produced away from puclic during the first 85 years of his life, because he deemed his work for a private matter. Not before the presentation of his work in connection with the release of his monography a broader public learned about the existence of his art works.(4)

Until today, some of his works are exclusively in private collections and can be found only occasionally on the auction market.

Exhibitions

Literature

External links

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