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I was born 1941 in Leipzig as the son of the painter Heinrich Kutzer. People often
think, it’s easy to become an artist growing up in an artists house. Sorry, for me it
wasn’t at all! Of course I learned a lot about techniques, but to find the own path
out of a genial father’s shadow isn’t easy.
After the war we moved to Northern Germany. Since then the border of the sea had a
great influence on my life. I feel best hearing the sea gulls crying. And though I later
lived for decades in Southern Germany, I was always longing for the sea shore, spent
all summer holidays at the Danish coast and got most of my motives from there.
In school I learned Latin and Greek and a little poor English. I loved to read the
antique authors and philosophers. Art was my surrounding and nothing special. I
thought natural science, especially Paleontology, was much more exciting.
But one day, when I was 16, I was deeply touched by the paintings of Michelangelo
in the Sistine Chappel and I knew for sure I would become an artist. Since then I
drawed and painted, whenever I had time to do so.
After my school exam I went to South Germany and made an apprenticeship in art
glass work. in Stuttgart, as I intended to design church glass windows and wanted
to know the entire process of their production starting from the bottom.
I absolved my 1 ½ years civil service (instead of military) in a psychiatric hospital
and the experiences there made me like to work with other people. When I began to
study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart in 1965, I changed soon to the College
of Education in Ludwigsburg, as studying at the Academy that time didn’t seem
grounded enough to me.
From 1969 to 1975 I worked as an elementary teacher, married and got a son.
Though I couldn’t afford a studio that time, I painted all my free time. Crabs and
dolls became my favorite motives.
1974 I had my first singular exhibition in Stuttgart and when I got a grant from the
state, I studied for three years at the Academy again, especially etching and art
history.
After the exam 1978 I worked for quart of a century as a teacher of art at the
gymnasium of the Jörg-Ratgeb-School, at last as a deputy principal.
In the late 70th I discovered Tolkien and became inspired to a series of etchings. I
loved to paint in cycles, the Nine Muses or the Seven Cardinal Virtues and Death
Sins. I joined the Artist Society and had to or three singular exhibitions every year.
New motives came to the old ones: snail shells, books, cemeteries, especially Jewish
ones, and Punch. I discovered the archetypical symbolic of Tarot and the death of
my father caused a longer preoccupation with the Danse Macabre. I worked for
years on my own tarot and a series of scenes with the death.
Educational trips led me to England, France, Italy and Poland. I used to fix the
impressions of these journeys in small paintings on black paper, I later called “A
Nightmare’s Diary”.
After 40 years living in Stuttgart a great change in my life happened, when I got to
know my second wife Susan. I moved to USA - what I never had expected,
convinced European I was! - and I discovered the beauty of the Lake Michigan
shore. It’s amazing for myself, how fast I began to feel at home in Wisconsin.
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