Neumann Heinz

Heinz Neumann was born on February 9, 1931 in what was then Wüstewaltersdorf in Silesia, which today belongs to Poland and is called Walim. Heinz Neumann was given his first "painting assignments" at elementary school. Due to a lack of textbooks for lessons, he was commissioned to paint the blackboards for two elementary school. Studies in nature and the use of school chalk sharpened his eye. In May 1946, the then 15-year-old had to leave his homeland with his family, carrying a roll of children's drawings in his rucksack.

From 1947 to 1953, Heinz Neumann attended the Kunstgewerbeschule (now Hochschule für Bildende Künste) in Braunschweig. His main subjects are painting, drawing and writing, his teachers include Günter Clausen and the sculptor Paul Egon Schiffers. In 1952, Neumann attended the "Free Painting" course at the Braunschweig Adult Education Center.

His teachers there were Charlotte Rödel-Voss and Bruno Müller-Linow, co-founder of the Lower Saxony Secession and head of the painting class at the School of Arts and Crafts. Since 1965, Heinz Neumann has taken numerous painting vacations in Italy: from the South Tyrolean Alps between Bolzano and Merano via Malcesine and Bogliaco on Lake Garda to the Riviera. It is here that the colors and light of the south come into play in Neumann's painting for the first time. From 1972-1974, Heinz Neumann studies "Nude Drawing" for several semesters at the University of Education in Braunschweig under Professor Ernst Straßner.

Neumann became increasingly interested in art history and expanded his color palette, not least by studying works by Corinth, Bonnard and Purrmann. Over time, Heinz Neumann pushed his painting more and more into the surface. His most recent works go one step further and free themselves - albeit cautiously - from the object. Slowly, the interplay of colors and forms takes over the main role in Neumann's painting and gives rise to a new visual language.