WOLFRAM, painting, permanent artist of the Galerie Capazza since 1986

Biography

Wolfram Aichele, painter, born in 1924 in Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany). He grew up in the town of Pforzheim, where his father, the animal painter Erwin Aichele taught drawing.

Very early, he shows a taste for the atmosphere of small villages with their half-timbered houses that he applies to draw. Popular art attracts him. He is also fascinated by the works of German Gothic. His adolescence is marked by great mountain races that reveal him the alpine landscape, from which he retains the reflection of the light on the glaciers, the game of atmospheric changes and the crystalline structure of the seracs.
Wolfram is not very keen on academic studies and is trained as a carpenter before learning how to carve wood in Upper Bavaria.

The call to the flag interrupts this training.
In 1942, Wolfram was sent to Russia and became seriously ill. He remains a long time between life and death. Restored, he is transferred to the Western Front where he is taken prisoner. After two years of captivity in the United States, he returned to Germany in 1946. He could then complete his training as a sculptor.

In 1949, he enrolled in the sculpture class of the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart and began to paint and mosaic. This period of personal research is first and foremost marked by a deepening of his interest in avant-gardes and the discovery of degenerate artists.

At the same time, he is attracted by Byzantine art, which seems to respond to a quest for an art that expresses a spiritual dimension. He learns icon painting and explores the theology that is related to him. In 1954 he began a long journey in the Balkans, visiting Serbian monasteries, staying for several weeks at Mount Athos.

Beginning in 1955, Wolfram creates small-format paintings in which the memory of his journey blends with reminiscences of Central European folk art. But these charming compositions reveal above all the lessons learned from artists of the Blaue Reiter, cubism and works from the Russian period of Chagall.

The following year, Wolfram moved to Paris. He definitely adopts watercolor, which he will explore the technique in a very personal way throughout his career. His spatial research tends towards an abstraction of the forms, in profit, in favor of the luminous effect supported by colored tensions. The human figure disappears, the themes are reduced to a few interiors, still lifes, architectures, and especially landscapes divided into facets, balanced like architectural constructions, and whose vibrating aspect is not without evoking the music. Interest in Kandinsky and Klee is always present, but Wolfram's highly independent sensitivity and character, as well as his intimate sense of the spiritual, can not be satisfied with any theoretical system or current.

Wolfram found his pictorial language at the end of the 1960s, a period that corresponds to the beginning of his full recognition by the public. He mixes transparencies of an airy lightness with research of materials that are not expected of a watercolorist. The choice to limit oneself to the only works on paper, far from being a constraint, leads to a demanding deepening, always renewed.
In the 1980s, Wolfram introduced collages. He composes from pieces that he himself painted beforehand, or with falls of his own watercolors. The works thus acquire a tactile relief.

In the last years of his life, Wolfram moves further away from the transparency effects traditionally associated with watercolor.

He is concentrating more and more on the pure game of colors that become astonishingly intense, especially the red which takes a prominent place. It is no longer a question of space: his works have become totally abstract.

In the late 1970s Wolfram had settled with his wife and two children on the edge of the Bois de Vincennes. He lived there until his death in 2016.

To know more

One Month - One Artist is a monthly event to make you discover the artists of the gallery.

Find the one dedicated to Wolfram published in May 2019, to download here 

Main personal exhibitions

2019  Galerie Capazza, tribute exhibition, Nançay

2015  Château Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Allemagne

2014  Arts Elysées / Galerie Capazza de Nançay, Paris

2013  Galerie ART-Aujourd’hui  Paris

2009  Exposition "Familientreffen" à l'association artistique "Buslatgilde" Neulingen/Pforzheim, Allemagne

2008  Galerie Olivier Nouvellet, Paris rue de Seine

2005  Association artistique “Buslatgilde” Knittlingen - Allemagne
Galerie Olivier Nouvellet, Paris rue de Seine

2004  Galerie Capazza, Nançay, France

2002  Centre Culturel "Nikolaus-Cusanus-Haus" Stuttgart-Birkach, Allemagne

1997  Galerie Municipale "Kunsthöfle", Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Allemagne

1996  Centre Culturel "Johanneshaus", Oeschelbronn, Allemagne

1993  Galerie Ruf, Munich, Allemagne
Galerie du Pontgirard, Monceau-au-Perche. France

1992  "La petite Galerie"(Max Fullenbaum), Paris

1991  Galerie de Luxembourg, Grand-duché

1988  Galerie Capazza, Nançay, France

1987  Galerie de Luxembourg, Grand-duché de Luxembourg
Galerie Wolf, Pforzheim

1986  Galerie Capazza, Nançay, France

1984 Bundesbank (Banque Fédérale) Francfort/M. Allemagne
Galerie Chichio Haller, Zurich, Suisse

1983  Kunstverein Backnang, Allemagne

1982  Galerie Jean-Louis Roque, Paris

1980  Galerie d'Art Municipale, Esch-sur-Alzette, Grand-duché de Luxembourg

Galerie "Haus zum Dachs", Fribourg en Brisgau, Allemagne

1978  Galerie L'Orangerie, Oostende, Belgique
Galerie Paul Bruck, Grand-duché de Luxembourg
Galerie Lenten, Epse, Pays-Bas

1977  Galerie Jean-Louis Roque, Paris
Galerie Betty Thommen, Bâle, Suisse

1976  Galerie d'Art Municipal, Esch-sur-Alzette, Grand-duché de Luxembourg

1974  Galerie L'Orangerie, Oostende, Belgique
Galerie Paul Bruck, Grand-duché de Luxembourg
Galerie Le Chapelin, Paris

1972  Galerie Jean-Louis Roque, Paris Galerie Saint-Léger, Genève, Suisse

1971  Galerie Bettie Thommen, Bâle, Suisse

1970  Gedokhaus Stuttgart, Allemagne

1968  Galerie Möhring, Wiesbaden, Allemagne

1967  Galerie Saint-Fargeau, Paris

1965  Galerie May Düsseldorf, Allemagne

1964   Kunstverein Erlangen, Allemagne - Kunstverein Pforzheim, Allemagne

1963  Galerie Hayden, Munich, Allemagne

1961/62  Galerie May, Düsseldorf, Allemagne