Biography
Friedermann Hahn was born in 1949 in Singen am Hohentwiel. He
grew up in Hinterzarten in the Black Forest. After a short period
as a ballet student in Frankfurt am Main, he started to study
painting at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf. In 1991 he
became Professor of painting at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste
in Mainz.
"The actor is a double for the character, and vice versa. Duality
is a feature of Friedemann Hahn's work in other respects. The film
paintings are vividly expressionistic. The same relationship exists
with another great series of Hahn works, his studies of fellow
artists from the earlier twentieth century. Look at a Hahn
masterpiece portraying E.L. Kirchner, for example, and you cannot
doubt that this is an expressionist painting of an expressionist
artist - colour, texture, form and mood all reflect the great
European tradition of creating art as an actively emotional
commitment.
Hahn, however, can seem as much an impressionist as anything else.
The emotional power of his independent brush strokes creates a
visual puzzle which is converted into a clear image in the usual
way, by stepping further back. But studied up close, the painting
reveals itself as a collection of brilliant components, abstract
passages lying within and adding up to the realised painting.
Hahn's loyalty […] is to art as a universal force. […] These are
works of intoxication."
Robert Heller, 2009
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