223 - VOLKER STELZMANN

VOLKER STELZMANN (born 1940 in Dresden, based in Berlin) Self-Portrait with a Red Shirt, 1976 Mixed media on hardboard. 45 x 31 cm. Framed. Monogrammed and dated (19)76 on the lower right. Titled and inscribed on the reverse. Volker Stelzmann moved to Leipzig with his family in 1948. After completing an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic, he attended the Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Design in Leipzig beginning in 1963. He began teaching there in 1973 and was appointed to a professorship that same year. In the 1980s, he fled to West Berlin and, in the meantime, served as a visiting professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt before becoming a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts in 1988. He has been working as a freelance artist in Berlin since 2006. The “Self-Portrait with Red Shirt” depicts Stelzmann in a grotesquely exaggerated manner. Leaning forward, he stands in front of a brown tiled wall, his hand resting on his chest. His gaze appears tired, sickly, and introspective; his eyes are bloodshot. A thin, greenish thread runs from his mouth and trails down onto his shirt—a detail of unabashed directness that lends the painting its true power. The appeal of the painting lies in the contradiction of its artistic means. Stelzmann models the face with his customary naturalistic precision; every wrinkle and every gray hair at the temple is carefully rendered. Yet this painterly meticulousness is applied to a condition that one would normally conceal. The artist captures a moment of physical weakness and illness. He does not turn away from it, but remains with this scene until he has captured it with the greatest possible fidelity to reality. The red of the open shirt envelops the figure, leaving it no escape. The skin appears sallow and veined with greenish shadows, while the tiled wall remains cold and anonymous.