Erwin Bechtold

Erwin Bechtold was born in Cologne in 1925. In 1944, he graduated in graphic arts to become a typographer, but during his apprenticeship years, he realized that this profession did not offer him the creative possibilities he was looking for. After brief studies at the Kölner Werkschule with Friedrich Vordemberge, he left for Paris where he worked with Fernand Léger. In Paris, he is preparing a trip to Barcelona. Enthusiastic about Spain, he decides to stay there. He soon established contacts with the Catalan avant-garde, the artists of the group “Dau al Set”. In 1956 made his first individual exhibition at the Salle Gaspar in Barcelona, supported by the "Club 49", an underground cultural movement. These are large-area material paintings with concentrations in the center or at the edges. During a later exhibition in Madrid at the Buchholz Gallery, he got to know the painters of the “El Paso” group. In 1954, Bechtold visited Ibiza for the first time. At the time, the island hosted artists from all over the world. In 1957, Bechtold returned temporarily to Germany, where he lived in Berlin. He receives an invitation to participate in the exhibition “A New Path in Art” at the Kunsthalle Mannheim. It was there that his first meeting with German painters of his generation took place. Since 1958, Bechtold has lived with his second wife Christina in San Carles. It was at this time that the “Grupo Ibiza 59” was created, which Bechtold helped to found. In 1961, he was invited for the first time to an exhibition of contemporary Spanish art that toured European capitals. Until 1963, Bechtold produced paintings of organic forms. They are exhibited at the Kunstverein in Cologne but are also presented at the Leicester Gallery in London. In 1965, geometric elements appeared for the first time in his paintings. In 1966, Bechtold was invited as a professor to England. At that time, he also participated in the activities of the “Syn” group in Germany; in 1968, he exhibited his works at the fourth Documenta in Kassel. In 1979, he created the Monoserie, a painting and sound installation that was first shown at the Miró Foundation in Barcelona and then at the museums of Ludwigshafen and Palme in Mallorca. In 1987, he started the series “Theme / angle / surface / space”. Between 1986 and 1988, Bechtold carried out some major integration works such as the four facades of the Reiss-Museum in Mannheim. From 1989, his work was exhibited in the museums of Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Cologne, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Hanover, Heidelberg, Ibiza, Madrid, Mannheim, Palme de Mallorca, San Sebastian, Seville, Stuttgart, Valencia and Washington, between other cities. Bechtold has received several recognitions for his artistic work: the Joan Miró Prize (mention, 1973), the Sixth Ibiza Biennial Prize (1974); for his works of interior architecture, the FAD Prize, Barcelona (1961). In 1962 Erwin Bechtold was elected member of the Deutscher Ku? Nstlerbund; in 1983, from the Akademie der Ku? nste in Mannheim and, in 1990, he received the honorary title of Professor of Land Baden-Wu? rttemberg. In Ibiza he received the Premi Illes Pitiuses (2005) and the Prei Ramon Llull de las Ill es Balears (2006). Bechtold's work is characterized by a constant balance or imbalance - it is the disturbing moment that disturbs the harmony of opposites which always dominates; starting with the beginnings of informalism in the 1950s and the inclusion of geometric elements in the 1960s, his evolution pushed him to create pictorial compositions in which he brought out the tension of the duality existing between hardness constructivism and the freedom of the informalist movement. Painter of material and researcher of form, with a balanced evolution, he resists fashions while always retaining his personal style.