Jürgen Partenheimer: Seeds and Tracks and Folded Spirits. South African Diary

Poet of subtle nuances

Born in Munich in 1947, Jürgen Partenheimer has emerged as a contemporary artist interested in literature and the humanities with his "subjective abstraction" approach. Over 20 years ago, "Die Zeit" recognised him as a literary traveller and called him the "poet of fine nuances, of delicate lines and tones". This impression is confirmed when one looks at the draughtsman's work, because he always operates along the lines, even when changing his métier, whether with oil, shellac or graphite on canvas or with sculptures in bronze, wood or wire. Jürgen Partenheimer's work is characterised by its fragility, which stems from the line and stands for the symbolic nature of his work. This is even clearly visible in the large stele sculpture "World Axis", a work measuring over seven metres and consisting of stacked, differently sized, hand-painted bronze shaft elements in different shades of blue. Few people know that the painter and sculptor, who now lives near Cologne, completed a doctorate in philosophy and art history in the mid-1970s, but this explains his literary intentions, which have been impressively documented time and again, for example in his diary-like notes from 2005, when he was a guest in Copan in Oscar Niemeyer's famous residential complex in São Paulo, or his drawings and notes from 2007, when he was invited to the Nietzsche House in Sils-Maria. This volume, now published as a 2013 edition in the "Kienbaum Artists' Books" series, collects his drawings and diary entries from 2011, which he calls his "South African Diary".