Uwe Wittwer
Encyclopedia
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
. He lives and works in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. The media he uses include watercolor, oil painting
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...
, inkjet prints and video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
.
Life and work
Uwe Wittwer is an autodidact. Born 1954 in Zurich where he went to school, he originally trained as a social worker (Bern, 1974–1977). In 1979 he rented his first studio. His early works were colourful abstract expressive oil paintings. The change towards figurative painting took place during the mid 80s. His first solo exhibition was at Galerie Walcheturm, Zurich in 1983. In 1989 he spent time in London on a studio grant (Binz 39 Foundation, Zurich). In 1994 he was at the Cité international des arts in Paris for a year on a grant by the Canton Zurich. In the same year, he received the Swiss federal scholarship for the arts. 1989 solo exhibition at Helmhaus Zurich, the first time his digitally edited photographs were shown. Since then, digitally manipulated images are part of his work. He works with images downloaded from the internet.'Uwe Wittwer is a painter with a restricted, a ritualised vocabulary'; his motifs consist of four main subjects:
landscapes, cities, still lifes and portraits, - later condensed into three main themes: idyll, referential work and the theme of violence.
The works of reference concentrate primarily on interiors and still lifes of Dutch Masters, such as Pieter De Hooch
Pieter de Hooch
Pieter de Hooch was a genre painter during the Dutch Golden Age. He was a contemporary of Dutch Master Jan Vermeer, with whom his work shared themes and style.-Biography:...
or Willem Kalf
Willem Kalf
- Life and work :Willem Kalf was born in Rotterdam, in 1619. He was previously thought to have been born in 1622, but H. E. van Gelder’s important archival research has established the painter’s correct place and date of birth. Kalf was born into a prosperous patrician family in Rotterdam, where...
. The theme of violence covers subjects like 'free time' of American soldiers in the Vietnam war
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, ruins of bombed out cities or scorched family homes.
Uwe Wittwer's work is underlined by 'the question of what a picture is' and the question how memory affects images.
Uwe Wittwer was guest tutor at the Witten/Herdecke University
Witten/Herdecke University
Witten/Herdecke University is a private university in Witten, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Unlike most other German universities, it is a private enterprise with about 1100 students and 400 employees...
, Germany (1998–2000) and at the Zeppelin University
Zeppelin University
Zeppelin University is a highly-selective, top-ranked, privately-funded research university in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The university was founded in 2003.- Overview :...
, Friedrichshafen, Germany (2010)
In 2008 he was voted into The 50 most important artists of Switzerland List by Bilanz Magazine
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Bern, CH (1991); Museum Schloss Morsbroich, Kunstverein Leverkusen, GER (1997); Helmhaus Zurich, CH (1998); University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh PA, USA (2000); Kunstmuseum Solothurn, CH (2005); Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, GER (2005); Haunch of VenisonHaunch of Venison
Haunch of Venison is a commercial art gallery founded in 2002 in the West End of London. The gallery represents leading contemporary artists with branches in London, Berlin and New York.-History:...
, Zurich (2007); Cohan and Leslie, New York (2008); Nolan Judin, Berlin (2009); Fred Jahn, Munich (2009); Haunch of Venison
Haunch of Venison
Haunch of Venison is a commercial art gallery founded in 2002 in the West End of London. The gallery represents leading contemporary artists with branches in London, Berlin and New York.-History:...
, London (2009); Lullin + Ferrari, Zurich (2010); Haunch of Venison
Haunch of Venison
Haunch of Venison is a commercial art gallery founded in 2002 in the West End of London. The gallery represents leading contemporary artists with branches in London, Berlin and New York.-History:...
, London
Group exhibitions include Tatort London, Galerie Schübbe, Düsseldorf, GER (1996); Die Schärfe der Unschärfe, Kunstmuseum Solothurn (1998); Swiss Contemporary Art, Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul (1998); Schafft Land!, Stadtmuseum Siegburg, GER (2000); L'Imagine ritrovata Museo cantonale d'Arte, Lugano, CH (2002); Big is beautiful Musée d'art et d'histoire de la Ville de Neuchâtel, CH (2002); Flower Myth - van Gogh to Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons
Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces....
, Fondation Beyeler
Beyeler Foundation
The Beyeler Foundation or Fondation Beyeler with its museum in Riehen near Basel owns and oversees the art collection of Hildy and Ernst Beyeler that was built up by the couple over five decades and placed under the aegis of the foundation in 1982. The collection was first publicly exhibited in its...
, Basel, CH (2005); Reprocessing Reality, P.S.1 MoMA
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...
, New York (2006); Fade Away and Radiate, Cohan and Leslie Gallery, New York (2007); Mythologies, Haunch of Venison
Haunch of Venison
Haunch of Venison is a commercial art gallery founded in 2002 in the West End of London. The gallery represents leading contemporary artists with branches in London, Berlin and New York.-History:...
Burlington Gardens, London (2009); Courtauld Institute of Art
Courtauld Institute of Art
The Courtauld Institute of Art is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art. The Courtauld is one of the premier centres for the teaching of art history in the world; it was the only History of Art department in the UK to be awarded a top...
, London (2010); Watercolour, Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
, London (2011)