4116 - Siegfried Ratzlaff, "The Thread"

Siegfried Ratzlaff, "The Thread" A portrait of an old man in a rocking chair, looking directly at the viewer, holding a thread in his hands, with an orange string of beads around his neck, which may be interpreted as a memento mori, as the man holds the thread of life in his hand and, through his gaze, invites the viewer to reflect on life and death; oil on canvas on wood, c. 1998, unsigned, titled on the reverse, numbered 39/98, with dimensions given as 330 x 565 mm; the wooden panel is primed black on the reverse and the canvas is blackened at the edges and fitted to the wooden panel; dimensions of the panel: 32.5 x 56.5 cm. Artist information: German painter, graphic artist, sculptor and teacher (1934, Vangerow, Köselin district, to 2025, Leipzig); regarded as the key inventor of the Decelith engraving technique; in 1946, resettled from Vangerow [Polish: Węgorzewo/Okonek] in the former Prussian province of Pomerania and moved to Sülzenbrücken/Wachsenburg district in Thuringia; 1949-53 attended grammar school in Arnstadt, 1953-57: studied art education at the Karl Marx University of Leipzig under Elisabeth Voigt, Heinz Olbrich, Hans Schulze and Kurt Biegholdt; graduated in 1957 as a sculptor, 1957-59: Art teacher in Eisleben; from 1959: Assistant Lecturer in Painting and Printmaking at the Karl Marx University of Leipzig; 1961-63: Postgraduate distance learning programme at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (HBK) under Lea Grundig; from 1970, lecturer in art education and, from 1978 to 1993, professor of painting and graphic art in the Department of Cultural and Art Studies at the Karl Marx University of Leipzig, 1963-67: candidate member and, from 1967, full member of the Association of Visual Artists (VBK) of the GDR; following his retirement in 1993, he worked intensively as a freelance painter in Leipzig and undertook numerous study trips to the Soviet Union (Kyiv, Kazan and Rostov), Czechoslovakia (Olomouc, Prague, Bratislava), Bulgaria, Denmark, London, Provence and Scotland; from 1997 a member and, from 1998 to 2002, deputy chairman of the Leipzig Association of Visual Artists; member of the Lützschena Artists’ Circle; source: Eisold, *Artists in the GDR*, catalogue of the Koenitz Gallery, Leipzig, “Siegfried Ratzlaff” (2022) and Wikipedia.