Peter Dreher is a contemporary German painter and graphic artist. His still lifes, landscapes and interior scenes made in conceptualism and contemporary realism are highly realistic although with few abstract traits. The subjects common for the artist include flowers, skulls and simple glasses. The latter was used in his most known series titled Day by Day good Day.
Background
Peter Dreher was born on August 26, 1932, in Mannheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany.
Peter created his first drawings at the age of seven though, he didn’t dream of becoming an artist.
When Peter was a twenty-year-old boy, his father, a Wehrmacht officer, died at the Eastern Front in Russia fighting at the World War II. The family house was completely destroyed. It was a huge trauma for young Peter who since then used painting as the refuge from the outside world.
Education
Peter Dreher entered the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe in 1950. He had studied at the institution for six years under the tutelage of well-known German painters, like Karl Hubbuch, Wilhelm Schnarrenberger and Erich Heckel, a co-founder of Die Brücke artistic movement.
Career
At the beginning of his artistic journey, Peter Dreher created his artworks in the style close to New Objectivity. The artist remained faithful to realism throughout all his career, even when such movements as Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Postminimalism, Pop Art, and Action Painting were on the top.
The debut solo exhibition of the artist took place in 1954 at the State Art Gallery in Mannheim. In the middle 1960s, Dreher began his teacher's activity – in 1965, he became as instructor of the painting class at the Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe. Three years later, the painter was named a professor of painting there.
One of the big series of Peter Dreher appeared in 1972. It was called Beautiful Days in the Black Forest and depicted the same landscape at different times of the day reflecting the conception of the time and of repetition.
This collection of canvases was followed two years later by another similar series inspired by the Chinese Chan (Zen) Buddhism and dubbed Day by Day good Day, a title borrowed from the well-known Chinese Zen master of the 9th century, Yunmen Wenyan. The paintings of the series which became one of the most famous made by the artist show us the same empty glass on a table in front of a white wall in the day and at night. Each canvas is realistic, but the whole series are abstract. From 1974 till today, Peter Dreher has produced about 5200 canvases of the series.
One more big series of Peter Dreher has the skull as a subject. It was started in 2005.
In fact, during his career, Peter Dreher participated in a great number of solo and group exhibitions in Germany and outside the country, including United Kingdom (London), United States, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, France, Italy (Venezia) and Austria.
Nowadays, Peter Dreher lives in Freiburg im Breisgau in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
Views
Quotations:
"Painting is the purpose itself. Our visible reality is the cause for painting, or the catalyst, with the subject being of minor importance."
"In my pictures, I underline the act of seeing."