Friedrich Schiemann, Abstract Composition, 1982, Oil on Canvas, Framed

Friedrich Schiemann
Recklinghausen 1918 – 1991 Düsseldorf

Composition, 1982

Oil on canvas
Signed and dated lower right
Dimensions: 29 x 48 cm
Frame: 56 x 77 cm
Authenticity will be confirmed in writing

Schiemann was a grandson of the sculptor Aloys Janik, who died in 1936. He was married to the goldsmith Bettina Schiemann-Cürten (1941–2001), the daughter of a physician. Their son, Philipp Schiemann, was born in 1969; he works as a writer, musician, and film actor.

Schiemann grew up in Dortmund in a coal miner's family. After graduating from high school and completing teacher training—and after the end of the war and a period as a prisoner of war—he studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1946 to 1950. There he was a student of Hauser and later the first master student of the post-war academy under Otto Pankok. from 1950 onward, he worked as a freelance artist.

On June 19, 1953, he received one of the four Cornelius Prizes, awarded by the jury of the Rhineland and Westphalia Art Association. 141 applicants (painters and sculptors) from what was then West Germany participated in the competition, submitting a total of approximately 500 works. Schiemann was among the youngest recipients of the Cornelius Prize. Another recipient in the field of painting in 1953 was Hermann Teuber from the Berlin-Charlottenburg Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1975, Schiemann was a visiting lecturer at the University of Bochum; he also undertook study and work trips to Corsica, France, Spain, and—repeatedly—Greece. In the early 1980s, he presented his paintings of Greece in a series of solo exhibitions. His work was influenced, among other things, by the abstract painting of Ernst Wilhelm Nay. Besides gouaches and oil paintings, he primarily created watercolors, but also portraits. A characteristic feature of his painting is the increasingly broad brushstrokes. After 1975, he returned to a more abstract style, and his paintings became more colorful. His late works were created between 1989 and 1991.