Claus Weidensdorfer

Claus Weidensdorfer studied from 1951 to 1956 at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden (HfBK) with Professors Erich Fraaß, Hans Theo Richter and Max Schwimmer. In the period from 1957 to 1966, he occupied a post as assistant professor for graphic art and painting at the Faculty of Education of the HfBK in Dresden. From 1966 on, Weidensdorfer worked independently as a painter and graphic artist. He also taught from 1975 to 1989 at the Fachschule für Werbung und Gestaltung in Berlin-Schöneweide, giving courses in design and the study of nature. After 1989, he returned to the HfBK Dresden and in 1992 obtained a professorship in painting and the graphic arts, being nominated as deacon of Department I (covering painting, the graphic arts, sculpture, and other fine arts media). After taking the status of professor emeritus in 1997, he set up a studio in Radebeul, working and living both there and in Dresden.

In his experimental works, Weidensdorfer was concerned primarily with the human form in representational painting and drawing. In the 1970s, he elevated color to a medium on a par with any other for creating form and shape. He often took everyday observations as his starting point and then sharpened them with drawing and graphics to create ironic, humorous scenes. A big fan of jazz, he brought music, but also literature and dance, into his world of images. In the lithograph Brücken sind keine Startbahnen, Claus Weidensdorfer revealed himself as an observer and chronicler of his city. The work comments on Dresden’s transformation through urban planning and the heftily discussed re-building of the city in the wake of the Second World War: international architecture styles clash with historical buildings and memory clashes with destruction. In this as in other works, Weidensdorfer finds plenty of room for the expression of his characteristically vivid and powerful colors.

text: Elke Neumann, translation: Darrell Wilkins