CHARLOTTE KOLLMORGEN - OBSERVATIONS ON THE WORK OF A PAINTER

By Prof. Dr. Johannes Eucker, Hochschule der Künste, Berlin

She paints.

She paints in oils - mainly.

She is a painter - a professional painter.

For more than 25 years she has been painting as a freelance artist.

For more than 25 years she has felt the urge to paint.

She produces no drawings, no sculptures, no installations, no spaces, no performances. She is a painter through and through. But hasnt always been - because she previously worked in another creative profession as a designer and graphic artist.

Since 1976 she has been painting.

From the word go she knows what shes doing. None of her works has ever been created just like that. She has a concept for painting. That one can see. And whose changes over time one can perceive. These changes produce phases or groupings of works in her creations that can be distinguished as variations in her use of imagery.

The artist thinks, feels and paints in one go. She paints without sketching. Colour is applied alla prima, only occasionally by overpainting or in several layers. Although the majority of her works have been painted in spontaneous execution they cannot be said to be the result of some cheap spontaneity. She is no impulse painter.

What she does has a foundation, is well founded.

Her entire work has structure, and her individual works thrive on structures. Self-assured, well-considered, but with emotion all the same, thats the way she works. Dynamic and tranquil at the same time, powerful and still subtly differentiating.

She is a painter and therefore colours are her primary artistic means of expression. Yet, colour does not exist without taking shape. And shapes fall into place in certain compositions. The shapes in Charlotte Kollmorgens paintings are organic.

As far as composition is concerned a personal preference catches the eye. Her pictures frequently have an emphatic centre occasionally owing their dynamism to the diagonal.

That’s roughly what my original notes looked like that I had jotted down after my first visit to the artist’s home. In the following I would like to elaborate on them in somewhat greater detail.

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