Background
Paul Wunderlich was born on March 10, 1927, in Eberswalde, Brandenburg, Germany. Wunderlich was the second child of Horst and Gertrude (Arendt) Wunderlich.
Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste
Paul Wunderlich was born on March 10, 1927, in Eberswalde, Brandenburg, Germany. Wunderlich was the second child of Horst and Gertrude (Arendt) Wunderlich.
The German painter studied at the Kunstschule in the orangery of the castle of Eutin. In 1947 he went to the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste, Hamburg, and studied graphic art. He extended his training by another semester to work under Willem Gremm.
In 1951 Paul Wunderlich was offered a teaching post at the school, which he held until 1961. In 1963 he became Professor for the Graphic Arts and Painting. Between 1951 and 1952, under the instruction of Emil Nolde and Oskar Kokoschka, he produced prints after their originals. In 1957 he created a series of Tachist paintings, for example "S111/57, but he destroyed most of them later.
Towards the end of the 1950s he produced his first figurative prints and paintings. In the beginning their subjects were events from more recent German history, for example the set of lithographs "20 July 1944", which depicted the execution of the men who had conspired against Adolf Hitler. This subject-matter was increasingly replaced by an eroticism that is partly Surrealist, partly decorative. In 1960 the public prosecutor of Hamburg confiscated such a series of prints.
Paul Wunderlich was a professor of graphic art and painting at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg, was also a painter, sculptor, and lithographer who lived and worked for part of the year in Hamburg and the rest in France. Married in 1963 to the photojournalist and fine art photographer Karin Szekessy, he sometimes painted and made prints from the nude photographs made by Szekessy.
Wunderlich belonged to the second generation of Fantastic Realists, sometimes called Magical Realists. These artists have remained faithful to the tradition although the imagery has remained contemporary. Paul Wunderlich, the most prominent among them, developed a style slightly cooler in temperament and more analytical. Often borrowing from classical mythology, he emphasized the human form within a context that blended together contemporary and historical references.
With cool aloofness, Wunderlich transported the viewer into a world of surreal eroticism and aesthetic symbolism. Again and again, Wunderlich spiced his Fantastic Realism with a startling dose of irony. After Picasso and Max Ernst no other artist has contributed as much to the sculpture of painters as Paul Wunderlich. The themes for his sculptures and objects were closely linked to his paintings, drawings, and lithographs. Wunderlich sculptures and objects combined the simplicity of an idea with the refinement of the material, and imagination with perfection in shaping something into a perfect form.
As an artist, Paul Wunderlich was faithful to his own artistic visions. Over a period of several decades, Wunderlich’s complex and comprehensive body of work has led to numerous exhibitions in museums worldwide. In 1994 - 1995, he had retrospectives in several Japanese museums (Tokyo, Osaka, Hokkaido, and Gifu). Wunderlich was successful in numerous international print competitions and has received many awards. In 1964, he was awarded the Japan Cultural Forum Award, Tokyo; in 1967, he received the Award Premio Marzotti, Italy; in 1970, he was awarded the Gold-Medal in Florence, Italy; in 1978, he received Gold-Medals at the Grafik-Biennale in Taiwan and in Bulgaria.
He lived and worked in Hamburg and Saint-Pierre-de-Vassols (Provence), where he died after a short illness on June 6, 2010.
Woman With Fur
Man Reading
Strelitzia
A Game of Chess
Dancer
Vera
Minotaur
Die Rose
After Fountaine Bleu
Chasing Girls
La Chevaliere Dangereuse
The Ambassadors (after Holbein)
No Angel
Victoria
Odaliske
Example
Acrobatie sur Fond Noir
L’Oeuf Blue
Einhorn (unicorn)
Karin with Jupiter
Hercules under Female Influence
Nike
Zwischen zwei Altern
Girl with yellow cross
Woman With Mask
Two Torsos - Plakat
Olympia I
Mountain
Bosomfriends I
Zebrabluse
Flirt
Carina Lupa
Mann und Frau
La Pêcheresse
Young lady with hat (after Lucas Cranach)
Self-Portrait
Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (after Manet)
Sandwichlady II
Untitled (Woman With Flower)
Pisanelle
Paul married Isabella von Bethmann-Hollweg in 1957 but they divorced in 1959. Paul Wunderlich married photographer Karin Székessy in 1971, and the couple pursued art projects together.