
NORBERT SCHWONTKOWSKI
Dorian Gray
2011
Oil on canvas
59 by 51 1/4 in. 150 by 130 cm.
NORBERT SCHWONTKOWSKI
Ahn
2007
Oil on canvas
20 1/8 by 16 1/8 in. 51.1 by 41 cm.
NORBERT SCHWONTKOWSKI
Schwarzer Diamant
2007
Oil on canvas
19 7/8 by 15 7/8 in. 50.5 by 40.3 cm.
NORBERT SCHWONTKOWSKI
Mrs. WET
2007
Oil on canvas
39 1/2 by 31 1/2 in. 100.3 by 80 cm.
NORBERT SCHWONTKOWSKI
Mann am Loch
2007
Oil on canvas
24 by 16 in. 61 by 40.6 cm.
NORBERT SCHWONTKOWSKI
Glaubensbeweis
2007
Oil on canvas
31 1/2 by 23 5/8 in. 80 by 60 cm.
NORBERT SCHWONTKOWSKI
Seehausen
2006
Oil on canvas
23 7/8 by 35 5/8 in. 60.6 by 90.5 cm.
NORBERT SCHWONTKOWSKI
Frau mit Spiegel
2006
Oil on canvas
19 3/4 by 15 3/4 in. 50.2 by 40 cm.
b. 1949, Bremen, Germany
d. 2013, Bremen, Germany
Norbert Schwontkowski challenges artistic categorization; his work falls between abstraction, realistic representation, and cartoon. He created his paints from hand-ground pigments mixed with various materials to yield a multitude of textures. Schwontkowski also added metal oxides to the pigments, creating shimmering surfaces that continue to change over time. His palette of pale earth tones, blacks and grays creates a muted, subdued atmosphere, while his carefully worked surfaces and minimal gestures demonstrate his sophisticated paint handling. Schwontkowski’s work is often described as playful yet melancholy, and naive while still mature.
Norbert Schwontkowski was born in 1949 in Bremen, Germany. He attended Hochschule für Gestaltung in Bremen, and later became a professor of painting at the Hochschule für Bildende Künst at Hamburg. Schwontkowski has regularly exhibited in galleries and public institutions throughout Europe since the late 1970s. Most recently, his work has been exhibited at the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamston, MA (2013); Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (2011); and the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2010). His work was included in the 2005 Berlin Biennial, and is held in museums including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He died in 2013 in Bremen, Germany.
For Painting Between The Lines, fourteen contemporary painters created newly commissioned paintings based on descriptions of paintings in historical and contemporary novels by authors such as Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, Sylvia Plath, and Milan Kundera. By examining the ways contemporary artists look at storytelling, literature and writing as expressions of individual thought, Painting Between The Lines looks at the state of contemporary painting today, presenting some of its most innovative practitioners such as Laylah Ali, Marcel Dzama, and Fred Tomaselli.
In his drawings and paintings, Norbert Schwontkowski (who lives in Bremen and Berlin) does not explore the path to abstract visualization and instead has discernible objects and figures emerge from the foundation to the images he creates.
Norbert Schwontkowski is featured in the CCA Wattis Institute's Painting Between the Lines, which continues the Institute's investigation into the relationship between literature and art. For this show, the CCA Wattis Institute has commissioned fourteen artists to create paintings based on descriptions of paintings in historical and contemporary novels. Examining the state of contemporary painting, Painting Between the Lines attest to the vitality of the medium. Though literary sources have been a common source of painting's subject matter historically, more recently, painting has looked to history, society, politics and itself for inspiration. Schwontkowski's painting responds to Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Like a perfect pitch, a gift for painting affects different people in different ways. Norbert Schwontkowski mostly shrugs it off. Norbert Schwontkowski mostly shrugs it off. Born in 1949 in Bremen, he is just a few years younger than Anselm Keifer, and something of that scenery-chewing artist's polar opposite.
Uptown, Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents the New York solo show of another German artist, Norbert Schwontkowski. Born in 1949, and active since the end of the 1970s, this painter began only recently to impose himself on the attention of the international public, first with a personal exhibition at Miami's Rubell Collection in 2005 and then with his participation in the latest edition of the Berlin Biennial.