Jürgen PartenheimerSeeds and Tracks and Folded Spirits. South African Diary

Poet of fine nuances! Born in Munich in 1947, Jürgen Partenheimer has emerged, with a working method he describes as “subjective abstraction,” as a contemporary artist with literary and humanistic interests. More than twenty years ago “Die Zeit” already recognised in him a literarily inclined traveller and called him the “poet of fine nuances, of delicate lines and tones.” This impression is confirmed when one looks at his work as a draughtsman, because even when he changes métier – whether working with oil, shellac or graphite on canvas, or on sculptures in bronze, wood or wire – he always operates along the line. For the hallmark of Jürgen Partenheimer’s work is the fragility that derives from the line and that stands for the sign-like character of his oeuvre. This is still clearly visible even in the large stele sculpture “Weltachse,” a work measuring more than seven metres and consisting of stacked bronze box elements of differing size, hand-painted in various shades of blue. Few people know that the painter and sculptor, who today lives near Cologne, took his doctorate in philosophy and art history in the mid-1970s, but it explains the literary intentions he has impressively demonstrated time and again – for instance in his diary-like notes of 2005, when he was a guest at Copan, Oscar Niemeyer’s famous residential complex in São Paulo, or in his drawings and notations of 2007, when he was invited to the Nietzsche-Haus in Sils-Maria. The volume published here as the 2013 edition in the “Kienbaum Artists’ Books” series gathers the drawings and diary entries made in 2011 that he has entitled “South African Diary.”