By

Wolfgang Ritschel with "Lady in Blue"

With the mind of a scientist and the eye of an artist, Wolfgang Ritschel turns a long career as a medical researcher and professor, an ongoing education in the visual arts, a love for the Expressionist works of the early 20th century and a knowledge of color theory to create vibrant canvases that bow to the past while resonating in the present.

Science and art may seem far distant cousins to those who carry the stereotype of the passionate and intuitive artist versus the logical and cerebral scientist. Yet the history of art paints a very different picture in which science and art coexist in a fertile double helix of color theory, optics, perspective, meteorology, chemistry, pigments, solvents, sociology, psychology, anatomy and so on. Wolfgang Ritschel personifies this marriage.

His upcoming exhibition of acrylics, mixed media works, pastels and sculpture at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, Wolfgang Ritschel: Stairs, clearly exemplifies this melding, seasoned with a spiritual element that avoids sentimentality.

Trained as both artist and scientist, Ritschel recently turned art from an avocation to a full-time vocation. He explains, "After 12 books and 440 scientific publications, I decided, 'Enough. I want to do what I originally wanted to do,' and I just gave it all up and became a full-time artist. I should say that I had another profession from the very beginning: I continued to paint throughout my entire life. I took art courses, and there is not a single year when I did not make several paintings. Whenever I traveled -- and I traveled really around the world -- I always had my sketchbook and watercolors or pastels."

His travels are documented in the scenes he paints -- as varied as a stone house in Jerusalem, the Great Wall of China, Parisian street scenes, crumbling South American landmarks, New York City's Soho gallery district, the adobes of America's Southwest, misty forest paths in Tennessee and Kentucky, views of his native Austria and familiar places in and around Cincinnati, including the view of downtown Hamilton from the gallery windows of the Fitton Center.

What ties these works together -- along with the repeated imagery of stairs and steps -- is a style historically based on that of the German Expressionists, who rose to prominence before World War I. Ritschel is specifically influenced by the group known as the Blue Rider (Blaue Reiter), which included Vasily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee and others. The most fertile pre-War group in Germany, the Blue Rider espoused a violent romanticism, composed of action and struggle, using bold lines and intense colors. Beyond the more well-known names of the Blue Rider artists, Ritschel cites, "Gabriele Munter. She was the girlfriend of Kandinsky. That is the particular influence. She is my idol." Munter's work, emulated by Ritschel, is characterized by heavy outlines, overlapping forms and pure, often contradictory, colors.

Ritschel's use of color, however, comes as much from his experiences of science as of art. "My color evolved over the years because of my prolonged stays at high altitudes in the Andes in South America, beginning with a trip to Peru in 1971. That was the first time I experienced that colors are different at this high altitude." He returned to South America often, in recent years staying as long as four months at a time to conduct high altitude medical research.

"Then my first experiences of perceiving color differently came really very strongly back," he says. "There are several reasons for it. One is that at high altitudes there are no particles in the air. Another is that the humidity is very low, so there are no water droplets. Hence, a light beam coming to your eye is not deflected, not reflected, not diverted, not diluted, nothing. Pure color comes to your eye. Whatever I paint, I paint it now in these colors as I would perceive it at the high altitudes."

This clarity results in objects at a distance seeming as brightly colored as those at close range -- unlike the distant blue

mountains or forests of humid regions -- so that perspective is confused and flattened. This perception is mirrored in his work by overlapping forms that, while two-dimensional, gain depth from being stacked, as seen in "High in the Andes," painted in Cuzco, Peru. "Because if you do an overlapping, your brain completes it," Ritschel explains. "If this is forward, the other must be behind it. This painting represents exactly the spot where, for the first time, I experienced the color at high altitude."

The unifying motif of stairs grew from a view he painted in Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa, the route Christ took on his way to be crucified at Calvary. In "Stairs in Old Jerusalem," through a shadowy stone house, a doorway frames a view of a hallway ending in a flight of stone steps with a faint glow of light emanating from above them. "Something like the light at the end of the tunnel," Ritschel remarks.

"These stairs had seen so much," he adds. "This house was older than 2,000 years. It was standing there when Christ went by it. If stairs could tell us something about how many generations had lived since that time, how many children had walked up those stairs, how many old people. Somehow, I was intrigued by the phenomenon of stairs and the people who use these stairs. So over the last five years, I painted stairs when I found something interesting." The views range from the well-known to the idiosyncratic and are generally underpinned by the kind of spiritual or emotional imagery that is so compelling in "Stairs in Old Jerusalem."

For example, "Lady in Blue," a large (52 by 72 inches) unstretched canvas that will greet visitors on the landing leading up to the Fitton exhibition, overlays a famous Parisian view of Notre Dame from across the Seine with a myriad of symbolism and references both social and spiritual. The twin medieval towers of Notre Dame loom pink and yellow against a brilliant tangerine sky, a beacon of hope contrasted to the tiny, identical people who walk below. Their sameness seems to signal modern city dwellers' isolation from God and from each other. According to Ritschel, "They're dressed all the same because in a big city you can be very much alone. There might be a hundred thousand people around, but you don't have any contact with them unless you seek people yourself. Because people are around doesn't mean you are within a community."

Underlining that isolation, two figures in the foreground on the near bank of the river stand back-to-back, not touching, each involved in examining the offerings of a bookseller. One, however, the lady in blue for whom the painting is titled, may stand in for the Catholic image of Mary, traditionally portrayed in blue, and here shown in front of "her" church (literally, "Our Lady of Paris"). Underlining the passion of the scene, the trees along the river flame pure red, outlined in complementary electric green. A flight of steps leads up to the church level from the jade green river.

Other works repeat the "light at the end of the tunnel" motif, reflecting many cultures and religions. "Towards the Light, Monastery in Albi" (Southern France) shows the view through a medieval tunnel with green light from a garden at the end. Likewise, in "The Great Wall" (China), an arch in the foreground opens to a vast expanse of green valley bisected by the famous wall. "Inca Gate" (Peru) opens to reveal a flight of stairs where an intense purple shadow meets the brilliant orange with turquoise highlights of sunlight flooding the ancient stones. "Theater Stairs in Madrid" (Spain) reverses the motif and adds a note of mystery and anticipation by depicting a lighted staircase ending at a darkened doorway.

"Soho"

Three mixed-media works of textural and intensely colored New Mexico scenes give Ritschel the vehicle to explain his scientific approach to color, pigments and materials. Because acrylic paint dries so quickly, he developed a solvent that allows him to work with it for several hours, mixing colors and making changes directly on the canvas as can be done with oils.

"With acrylic, you have about 60 percent pigment, and the rest is polymer," he related. "With pastel you have about 98 percent pigment and 2 percent binder. I work with acrylic and then go over it with pastel, rubbing it in with my finger while the acrylic is still wet to get my colors. When I prepare my painting ground, I mix glass particles into the gesso, and therefore get a very rough surface that sparkles like millions of little stars under a halogen light and also holds even more of the pastel."

Rounding out the exhibition, two sculptures feature various medical motifs such as DNA, ancient runes and symbols, and medical equipment executed in stained glass and other materials including a step ladder ("Medsteps") and hundreds of keys ("Key to Life III: Double Helix").

E-mail the editor

personals | cover | listings | humor | news | movies | music | arts & entertainment | classifieds | mediakit | home

Can't Take It
Classic comedy gets another community theater staging

Red Letter Day
Ovation stages play based on Hawthorne's classic novel

Natural Storyteller
Local theatergoers are about to get a double dose of Martin McDonagh

Curtain Call

Writer's Block
Bee All That You Can Bee

Gross National Product
Radio's breath of 'Fresh Air,' Terry Gross

Arts Beat
Sustaining ArtWorks during the 'Big Pig' Stampede

	Join the CityBeat Mailing List
	» JOIN NOW