Peter Wirth, 1951–2018
Who Peter Wirth was
Peter Wirth was a German painter, printmaker and photographer. He was born in Bochum in 1951 and died in Bottrop in 2018, both in Germany's Ruhr area — the country's old coal and steel region.
He trained first as a typesetter, sat his school-leaving exams at evening classes, and then studied graphic design at the Folkwang school in Essen under Professor Sabine Tschierschky. He graduated with distinction.
Peter Wirth worked for four decades — in acrylic on cotton canvas, in chalk on paper, in etching and linocut, and in his last years in photography. He exhibited throughout, and he sold through those exhibitions. That is what the family lived on.
The archive Peter Wirth kept of his own work
Peter Wirth kept far more than he let go. He ran his own catalogue by hand, with numbers into the thousands, photographed each work himself and filed it by series and by year. When he died in 2018 the estate held just under 15,000 archived objects. Divine Editions prints from that archive, with the family's authorisation.
Peter Wirth at the Ägyptisches Museum Berlin, 1993 — catalogue text by Dietrich Wildung
In 1993 the Egyptian Museum in Berlin showed Peter Wirth's Nefertiti cycle under the title Mutmaßungen über Nofretete — Conjectures on Nefertiti. The catalogue text was written by the museum's director at the time, Prof. Dr. Dietrich Wildung, who led the collection from 1989 to 2009.
He had not been asked for it. Peter Wirth had sent him the catalogue of his own work on his own initiative, and the exhibition followed from that.
Wildung wrote in German. The two passages below are quoted as he wrote them, each followed by our own English rendering.
„Das künstlerisch überzeugende Ergebnis dieses gefahrvollen Unterfangens liegt darin begründet, daß die allzu vertrauten Motive bis an den Rand der Erkennbarkeit reduziert werden, dadurch ihre formale Struktur bloßlegen und eine Wertigkeit zurückerhalten, die ihnen durch ihren hohen Publizitätsgrad verloren gegangen war.“
What makes this dangerous undertaking convincing as art is that the all-too-familiar motifs are reduced to the edge of recognition, laying bare their formal structure and giving back a value that their sheer publicity had worn away.
„Peter Wirths Arbeiten sind nicht eine Sammlung von Einzelanalysen, sondern die Bausteine einer Gesamtvision des Allgemeingültigen in den Werken einer nicht epochengebundenen Kunst.“
Peter Wirth's works are not a collection of individual analyses, but the building blocks of an overall vision of the universal, in the works of an art not bound to any period.
Prof. Dr. Dietrich Wildung, catalogue text, Mutmaßungen über Nofretete, Ägyptisches Museum Berlin, 1993. Quoted with the author's kind permission. English rendering ours.
See the Nefertiti series in the shop — the ten paintings and the eight linocuts from that cycle, printed from the archive.
Solo exhibitions by Peter Wirth, 1977–2019
Peter Wirth held solo exhibitions between 1977 and 2019, chiefly in Germany's Ruhr area, in Bremen and in Berlin. The full list follows.
1977 · Jazz & Art Galerie, Gelsenkirchen
1982 · Stadtgalerie Altena
1985 · Kunsthaus Mettmann
1988 · Kunsthaus Essen
1990 · Kunstforum Gummersbach
1992 · Kunstraum Marl
1993 · Mutmaßungen über Nofretete, Egyptian Museum, Berlin
1996 · Residence, Essen
2000 · Galerie Mönch, Bremen
2000 · Galerie AVIVA, Essen
2003 · Jazz & Art Galerie, Gelsenkirchen
2003 · Factory, Ratingen
2005 · Galerie Mönch, Bremen
2005 · Haus des Zentralverbandes SHK, Potsdam
2010 · Galerie Mönch, Bremen
2019 · Galerie Mönch, Bremen
Group exhibitions including work by Peter Wirth, 1981–2023
Work by Peter Wirth appeared in group exhibitions from 1981 to 2023, including five consecutive years in the juried Große Kunstausstellung NRW in Düsseldorf. The full list follows.
1981–1985 · Große Kunstausstellung NRW, Düsseldorf — the juried state exhibition, five years running
1981 · Galerie Schüppenhauer, Essen
1981 · Galerie der Stadt Frankenthal
1982 · Galerie Erhard Witzel, Rodgau
1983 · Kunstpreis Junger Westen, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen
1984 · Haus der Kunst, Munich
1985 · Künstlerbund, Lüdenscheid
1986 · Galerie Inge Donath, Troisdorf
1992 · Bruno-Goller-Haus, Gummersbach
1994 · Galerie AVIVA, Essen
1995 · Kunst ohne Grenzen, Norderstedt
1998 · Kunstforum Gummersbach
1999 · Galerie Due, Bochum
2004 · Stanzwerk, Bochum
2009 · Bremer Kunstfrühling
2009 · Still Life, Galerie Mönch, Bremen
2010 · Quadrat, Bottrop
2010 · Galerie Mönch, Bremen — with the artist Eberhard Szeistecki
2014 · 4 Mal Folkwang, Museum Folkwang, Essen
2015 · Magische Orte – Magische Momente, Galerie Mönch, Bremen
2023 · Companions – 15 Künstler*innen, Galerie Mönch, Bremen
Awards and prizes won by Peter Wirth
Peter Wirth received four awards and fellowships between 1978 and 1983.
1978 · First prize, graphic art competition, Essen
1981 · City of Frankenthal award
1982 · Fellowship of the Aldegrever-Gesellschaft, Münster
1983 · Second prize, Junger Westen, Recklinghausen
Compiled from the artist's own records and the family's press archive. A German-language biography of Peter Wirth is also held on Wikipedia. He was represented in his later years by Galerie Mönch, Bremen.
A note from Angelika Hannig-Wirth, the artist's widow
My husband liked company, and he liked being outside. He walked most days — the woods next to us, or up the old spoil heap behind them, which is the closest thing this part of Germany has to a mountain. Our son Max went with him when he was small; in the later years it was Wilma, the last of our dogs, somewhere out ahead.
Evenings were for films. Thrillers above all — Hitchcock, Kubrick — and he could talk about one for a week afterwards. And books, always books, on the table, on the arm of the chair, half read and waiting.
He painted almost every day for forty years. He showed his work and he sold it, and that is what we lived on. But painting was not the whole of him, and he would not have wanted a page that said it was.
He also let go of far less than he made. He gave every piece a number, photographed it, and put it away.
For eight years after his death the archive stayed where he left it. Opening it was not a decision I took quickly. What settled it is simple enough: the work was made to be looked at, and a cupboard is not a place to look.
Every print carries a registration number, recorded in our archive, and every certificate is issued in my name. My son, Max Wirth, supports me with the archive and the shop.
— Angelika Hannig-Wirth, Bottrop