Alfred Ziethlow *1911 ; † 2003
Alfred Ziethlow was born on June 18, 1911, in Samotschin, Kolmar District, Posen Province, where he lived with his family until 1920. He received his artistic training at various institutions: After graduating from high school in Herne (Westphalia), he first attended the School of Applied Arts in Dortmund from 1930 to 1933, then the Folkwang School in Essen from 1933 to 1935, and finally the Bremen University of the Arts from 1935 to 1936, before studying for one year as a master student under Professor Heinrich Nauen at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts.
After his father’s death, the young artist moved with his mother and brother to Münster in Westphalia. Ziethlow earned a living working as a freelance artist and commercial graphic designer. After the outbreak of the war, he was drafted into the army and stationed in Russia from 1941 to 1943. However, due to illness, this assignment was interrupted in 1942, and Ziethlow lived for some time in Munich, where he moved into a studio on Sendlinger Straße. During the massive bombing raid on the city, all of the artist’s works stored there were destroyed by fire. After returning to his birthplace, Samotschin, he eventually fled from there to Horn/Lippe in 1944.
From 1945 to 1950, he worked as a freelance painter and director of his advertising studio, and was extremely active in the local art scene. He was a member of the “Lippischer Künstlerbund,” the “Werbefachverband Westfalen,” and the “Landesberufsverband bildender Künstler Nordrhein-Westfalen.” In 1949, he was one of the founding members of the “Freie Gruppe” (Free Group), an association of artists who presented their works in group exhibitions. Artists such as Emil Schumacher, Karl Otto Götz, and Thomas Grochowiak, among others, participated in these exhibitions. In 1950, Ziethlow moved back to Münster, where, in addition to his freelance artistic work, he served as a specialist teacher of art and advertising at the Municipal Commercial Schools. He lived and worked in Bad Salzuflen, Westphalia, until his death at the age of 92.
Ziethlow’s body of work as a freelance artist includes numerous oil paintings and watercolors, as well as several graphic works, etchings, lithographs, and silkscreen prints. The artist always held his materials to the highest standards, ensuring that the works have lost none of their vibrant colors to this day.
His exceptionally thorough training is reflected in the artist’s entire body of work. Ziethlow clearly belongs in the category of “classicists” and “traditionalists.” He felt little urge to keep pace with the frenetic drive of the avant-garde and remained unaffected by the American movements of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Although he did produce a few abstract compositions, on the whole he remained committed to representational art.
Alfred Ziethlow always painted out of passion, out of a deep connection to art and art history, without ever questioning them. This outstanding painter and watercolorist drew inspiration from his numerous travels. On location, he created sketches and watercolors with spontaneous and confident brushwork, rendered in great detail and rarely simplified to the point of being sketch-like. The artist’s great mastery is evident in the spontaneous, irreversible nature of watercolor painting. In this way, Ziethlow sought to capture landscape and architectural impressions as well as moments of everyday human activity on streets and squares, which he would later translate into oil on canvas in his studio. The result is a body of work that continues to captivate today with its diversity of subjects, its genuine artistic language, and its high technical quality. Idyllic landscapes, vibrantly colored still lifes, psychologically sensitive portraits, the bustling lives of modern city dwellers, harbor scenes, and street scenes—images of life that can only be understood as a whole. In both the lighter watercolors, painted wet-on-wet, and the bold, impasto-style oil paintings, the color composition takes center stage. Adjacent swaths of color, vibrant hues liberated from their subjects, color as a constructive element— “pure” painting, so to speak—these characteristics can be used to describe Ziethlow’s compositionally complex works as a whole.