Dietmar Damerau (September 22, 1935 – October 22, 2011) was a German artist who lived most years of his life in Greece.
Life
Dietmar was born in
Preußisch Holland, East Prussia in 1935. When he was 10 years old, on January 22, 1945, Dietmar, his mother and his three siblings fled their hometown in an abandoned
Wehrmacht vehicle, with three other families fleeing the allied
bombing of Berlin
A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechanica ...
. They stopped in many European cities, that had been recently bombed such as
Hamburg,
Dresden,
Prague,
Styria
Styria (german: Steiermark ; Serbo-Croatian and sl, ; hu, Stájerország) is a state (''Bundesland'') in the southeast of Austria. With an area of , Styria is the second largest state of Austria, after Lower Austria. Styria is bordered to ...
,
Salzburg and
Coburg, eventually settling in
Munich. During the next few years, and after
the war had ended, he learned
typesetting in
Passau
Passau (; bar, label=Central Bavarian, Båssa) is a city in Lower Bavaria, Germany, also known as the Dreiflüssestadt ("City of Three Rivers") as the river Danube is joined by the Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north.
Passau's popu ...
at the "Neue Passauer Presse". There he met teacher and frien
Otto Sammerwhom he worked with many times over the years. He remained in the art world and continued his studies at the Academy of
Graphic Arts
A category of fine art, graphic art covers a broad range of visual artistic expression, typically two-dimensional, i.e. produced on a flat surface. in
Munich. He was forced to quit his studies due to a serious accident in
Seville,
Spain where he spent 2 years recovering in the hospital. In the early 1960s he moved to the island of
Crete in
Greece, where he settled, and lived for many years. In 1967, he was married and had one son, two years later. Later on, he was forced by the
military Junta to leave Greece – moving to
Sardinia. After the fall of the Junta, he returned to Crete. Extensive tourist development on the island caused him to want to leave again, at which point he moved to the small village o
Lafkoson the mountain of
Pelion, where he built a home and studio, beginning to paint and to create sculptures once again. He spent many years living i
Lafkos in various places in
Upper Bavaria and
Denmark. He lived a solitary, yet creative life, producing a high volume of artwork. He died at
Volos hospital at the age of 76, on October 22, 2011.
Work
His work consists of a wide range of media, including
drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, ...
,
painting,
printmaking
Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed techniq ...
and
sculpture. He composed his art using an array of materials, from the conventional oil paint and
gouache to anything he could get his hands on, such as
driftwood, trash, lipstick and coffee grinds.
He exhibited in various European cities such as
Copenhagen,
Athens,
Berlin and
Munich among others and was a member of the
Künstlergilde Esslingen since 1976. His largest painting is one covering a 106
square metre
The square metre ( international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or square meter (American spelling) is the unit of area in the International System of Units (SI) with symbol m2. It is the area of a square w ...
ceiling in a private home i
Lafkos which took him 3 years to complete.
[Siafkos, Christos. “Προσωπικά”]
To Paron
, Athens, 1993, par.6, (in Greek)
References
External links
* https://archive.today/20130217060505/http://www.museum-synthese.de/index_kuenstler_1.html?/kuenstler_1.html
* http://www.kuenstlerinbayern.de/kib/detail_print.phtml?kunr=1190
*
Pelion
{{DEFAULTSORT:Damerau, Dietmar
German artists
1935 births
2011 deaths
People from Pasłęk
Artists from East Prussia