Otmar Alt likes it colourful. Colourful and approachable – for the artist does not wish to explain his art but rather wants a relaxed meeting of viewer and work, a playful convergence, in which the German painter, sculptor and graphic artist avoids any ingratiation and circumvents well-trodden paths and established genres with great experimental enthusiasm and individuality.
(...) Continue readingOtmar Alt – Early contact with art and music
Otmar Alt was born on 17 July 1940 in Wernigerode where his father was the church musician and music teacher Rudolf Hermann Alt, a member of the Pietist Herrnhut Brethren Church. An air raid in 1945 robbed the family of its old apartment and their wealth which forced them to move home several times. In 1951, young Otmar moved with his mother to West Berlin whilst their father provided for the family as a travel guide. He rarely saw his wife and son as a result, and died in 1958. Despite this, art and music had always played a role in Otmar’s home and whilst attending Berlin Elementary School, he received piano and clarinet tuition, and completed an apprenticeship with distinction as placard painter and window dresser from 1956 to 1958. It was during this time that his desire to be a fashion designer was awoken.
Master student of Hermann Bachmann
Otmar Alt studied in Berlin from 1959, earning a living as a jazz musician in the group ‘Selfworkers’. His teachers at the University of Arts were Ulrich Knispel, Bernhard Heiliger and Karl Hartung, and from 1964 he was master student of Hermann Bachmann. Alt initially oriented himself to abstract painting and moved into a shared studio with Waldemar Grzimek in rooms that had previously belonged to the sculptor Richard Scheibe, and during this time, Alt produced numerous works in the Informel style, many untitled. The painter Emilio Vedova, who worked for Alt as a chauffeur, made a great impression on the young artist, but in 1965, he turned further towards figurative painting and visibly developed his own style.
Bright colours for a better world
To pay his way, Otmar Alt first worked as assistant stage designer in Frankfurt am Main and Trier. He continued his career as an artist, however, and was soon able to hold his first exhibition in the Berlin café ‘Like Bari’, followed by further solo exhibitions in Germany. With his unmistakeable and yet unique artworks, Alt quickly captured a large audience, but it would be a mistake to reduce the friendly figures to their cheerful colourfulness and to overlook the complex stories often hidden behind them. Only at first glance do the bright pictures and sculptures remind one of playful children’s figures, but those who make the effort to get closer to the seemingly fairytale-like pictorial world would be surprised to find how much background mythology comes alive within. The artist does not close his eyes to the grey, black, and bad in the world, but it is his endeavour and conviction to purify the shadows through art. It was not by chance that Otmar Alt designed the first Buddy Bear in 2003.
Otmar Alt lives and works today near Hamm where he has set up a spacious workshop in a former farmhouse. The Otmar Alt Foundation is nearby which was founded in 1996 by the self-confessed Freemason to offer support to young artists in the form of scholarships.
Otmar Alt - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz: