Christa John

Discreet colour wood engravings in the LAUDA FactoryGallery
Christa John exhibits various subjects from 1997 to today

01.04.2008 - 31.05.2008

In the months of April to the end of May 2008, discreet colour wood engravings by Christa John from Weil der Stadt can be viewed at the LAUDA FactoryGallery. The artist Christa John was born in 1941 in Polsnitz, Silesia. She discovered wood engraving as her artistic métier relatively late. After studying at the Free Art School in Stuttgart, her main focus for many years was tempera painting. In between times, she produced chalk, pastel and ink drawings, gouache and monotypes. In 1996, she visited an exhibition by Horst Janssen. Since then wood carving has been her number one means of expression, and she makes very artistic wood engravings, in which the draughtswoman also finds expression. HAP Grieshaber once described the craftsmanship as follows: „In the cutting process, the dynamic is created from power, happiness and despair. The printing itself is surprise, experience, it is the rapture of creation and at the same time control over this.“ Christa John prefers the resistance of wood to the softness of linoleum. Expressivity, rather than subtle detail, tends to be at the forefront in this kind of printing. According to the artist, wood engraving forces one to concentrate on the basics. The artist mainly discovers her subjects on walks and on journeys. Examples will also be shown in this exhibition. The Ticino, in which palms are rooted next to chestnuts and where the agave grows, whose valleys are crossed by emerald green, shimmering rivers and whose villages are made up of stone houses which cling to the steep hillsides, has always exerted a strong attraction on writers and artists. From the start, Christa John’s love belonged to the rural, the unspoilt Ticino – away from the towns, the motorway and other noisy roads. The exhibited wood engravings Ticino I, III and IV reflect this unspoilt nature. The atmosphere that is imparted by the wood engravings and the colours is characteristic of valleys like the Valle Onsernone, the Valle Maggia or the Valle Verzasca. A walk in autumn through vineyards was the inspiration for the subject „Wine growing country“. Vines form rows of vines, rows of vines form vine landscapes, the appearance of which gains in contrast and charm above all in late autumn and which almost cries out for artistic transformation. The eye cannot tire of this patchwork of leaves in bright red, in dark red and orange, in yellow and in yellowish green. The exhibited themes Wine growing country I to IV belong together, because they complement each other. They are completed as a mirror image and as positive and negative respectively. You don’t have to be a wine connoisseur to be intoxicated by the bouquet that these pictures exude. The subject „Formation“ shows a series of stone stories, which have been portrayed in a wider geological period. A porphyritic stone quarry was a model for the subjects Formation I and II, as well as for the subject Landscape with Quarry. A stay by the sea inspired the artist to create the wood engraving series „Maritimus“ (Latin for belonging to the sea, by the sea). Waves leave behind arrangements made from seaweed, shells and stones. What remains is the fleeting state of a moment, which is distorted in the wave which rolls in in the next moment. The exhibition in the LAUDA FactoryGallery, which is well worth seeing, can be viewed by art lovers during opening hours from Monday to Thursday from 9.00 to 12.00, as well as from 13.00 to 16.00, and on Friday from 9.00 to 12.00.

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