Gerda Schmidt-Panknin
Gerda Schmidt- Panknin ( born August 9, 1920 in Lüchow ) is a German painter. She lives and works in Kappeln.
Life
Gerda Schmidt- Panknin was the daughter of the teacher Otto Schmidt in Luechow, Duchy of Lauenburg, in Schleswig -Holstein. 1935 the family moved to Kappeln / Schlei, where Schmidt- Panknin 1938 graduated from high school at the Klaus Harms school. A study at the Nordic Art School in Bremen with Prof. Wilhelm Tegtmeier and Prof. Emil Waldmann (from 1939) joined after the war ended in 1946, a stay at the originally founded in Hamburg " BauKreis " to. The " BauKreis ", now in St. Peter-Ording/Eiderstedt, was for young painters who were at this time in a new direction, a place of training and exchanges. Teachers were, inter alia, Friedrich Karl Gotsch and the Hamburg painter Ernst Witt. After a freelancer from 1946 to 1952, the artist was from 1952 to 1977 as an art teacher at the high school in Kappeln active. Since 1977, Gerda Schmidt- Panknin working again exclusively as a freelance artist. After a first trip to Greece (1958 ) Travel became an important element in their lives and form the basis for her work.
Work
The focus of the work is the painting in which the artist often combines different materials and techniques. Incorporated other materials such as sand or shavings were in the 1960s and 1970s in oil paint, as has dominated since the 1990s, working with acrylic paint, often combined with chalk. In addition to painting a large number of woodcuts (mostly in the 1950s and 1960s ) emerged, monotypes and chalk work. Here, the boundaries between drawing, printing and painting are fluid.
The thematic focus of the works from the 1950s are the people of the circus and fairs. After an encounter with a Roma family pictures came again and again added to gypsies. This work earned her recognition by Otto Pankok who painted in 1957 located near Kappeln Hasselberg on the Baltic Sea and visited her in her studio.
With the ending of the 1950s, the travel of the artist the most important Insparationsquelle for artistic work were. First there was the light on the Greek islands they traveled twelve times in succession since 1958, with which they grappled in bright, dominated by shades of transparent images. Later there were the faces of the people she met on her travels through the regions of the Soviet Union (from 1968 ). In dealing with the Russian icon painting, the images were dark and heavy colors seem to glow from the depths. The pictures are not narrative, but primarily painting, which thrives on color application and the materiality of the paint and often additionally incorporated materials. After the first trip in 1980 in the north ( Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands and Scandinavia) produced images, which in turn dealt with the specific light and the vast northern landscapes. In order to solve the emerging problems here, Gerda Schmidt- Panknin turn developed new techniques, often combined it with chalk acrylic paints. From the mid- 1990s arise in their objectivity greatly reduced oil paintings of the landscape in the loop. In its recent 2008 exhibition in Kunsthaus Kappelner Hänisch they also showed portraits, in which the bright color is on the rugged base of the back of a carpet.
" About the landscapes, even more about the character images Gerda Schmidt- Panknins is a melancholy -sounding, retarding train. The heads of the Innuits example, do not radiate emotion. Instead, they exist, as, moreover, the landscapes on the notion of perfect timelessness. "(Dr. Uwe Haupenthal )
Influences
In addition to his own work Gerda Schmidt- Panknin has given in her time as an art teacher at the then relatively small Kappelner school a large number of students impetus to artistic education and activity. Her former students include the artist Peter Heber, Peter Nagel, Hans Jörg Schneider and Nicolaus Schmidt and the architect Peter Hübner.