My Teacher

Hans Jürgen Diehl
14.3.1994,  Öl/Leinwand, 215 x 214 cm, 1994
Courtesy www.hansjuergendiehl.de

The other day on my random Internet excursions (who needs a Zoo?), I stumbled upon the homepage of my teacher Hans Jürgen Diehl at Hochschule der Künste (now called Universität der Künste) in Berlin.
I have not spoken with him in over ten years, although I hear that he still spend considerable time every year in his place in New York City. Meanwhile, he's retired from teaching and apparently going strong. Check out his paintings. My favourites are the ones from the mid-late Nienties and I remember seeing some of them in person when visiting his studio in Berlin.
Besides color, I appreciate that energetic, gestural look of those interwoven lines, which, as far as I recall, are layered silhouettes of photographic source images. However, the paintings are  made in a much more methodical and laborious process, and for the most part very large (almost but never proper squares!).
His most recent solo show at Campagne Première in Berlin just closed.