A middle-aged man in a casual and relaxed pose.

A large painting by Willi Wernz, from 1976, portrays a middle-aged man in a casual and relaxed pose, creating a sense of nonchalance. The man leans on his left side against a wall, wearing jeans and a gray sweater. His hands are joined at his waist, contributing to the overall laid-back demeanor. The man's gaze is direct and meets the viewer's eyes, conveying confidence and openness. The man is captured from the thighs upwards, allowing for a focus on his upper body and facial features. He sports a mustache and thick dark hair, emphasizing a mature quality to his appearance.

The background of the painting is a vibrant interplay of varied colors rendered in abstract vertical and horizontal strokes. The artist has used a palette that includes black, reds, blues, and whites. This abstract background contributes to the overall atmosphere of dynamic and expressiveness of the subject. The combination of the man's relaxed pose and the abstract background creates an intriguing contrast, inviting the viewer to appreciate both the individuality of the subject and the artistic interpretation of the surrounding environment. The use of bold and varied colors in the background adds energy and complexity to the composition, enhancing the overall visual impact of the artwork.

Medium: Gouache on canvas. The painting is framed

Dimensions: 112 cm x 143 cm

"...the important natural painter Willi Wernz was very early on credited with a neorealism of fateful power. His works were like a lamentation of the creature beneath one desolate sky without mercy - a conversation with anonymous death that reports on a world that is unredeemed and irredeemable. His rubble poetry revealed to the reviewers the questionability of existence, as “the desolation and despair of the motifs stifle any outcry. That was well-intentioned, but it was nothing more and nothing less than a desperate attempt, in the style of a community college, to make the then modern art plausible and to excuse its distortions from an ideological point of view. His simplest excuse is still the most powerful: If you can talk about why you paint smelly fish, you won't paint them anymore."

"In the 1950s, Willi Wernz developed "his style" and discovered his motifs, to which he would remain uncompromisingly faithful until old age. Following a classic theory of sociology, Wernz can speak of the professionalization of aesthetic production. By combining the motifs “landscape” and “still life” the autonomous, professionalized artist emphasizes the painterly, concentrating on the purely pictorial realization, on the visible coloristic outer skin of the canvas. The attitude is reminiscent of the Leibl circle; I'm thinking particularly of Schuch, whom Wernz values ​​very much. An ethical side to this logic of painting could also be noted, namely an honesty and sincerity in the spirit of Cézanne, who confessed that he did not want to be right in theory, but in the eyes of nature. »The more openly, the more sincerely an authorial self reveals itself in the text, as Felix Philipp Ingold once said in a lecture, the more consistently and radically its fictionalization must be carried out. When it comes to the subject matter of Wernz's painting, many viewers saw this necessary fictionality of the picture's texture as an emergency. If I get stuck on the motifs, art criticism becomes savory; A dubious zeitgeist defines aesthetics and aesthetics demands things in the 50s."

Source: Willi Wernz, Bilder un Zeichnungen 1951 - 1990, Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim 1990.

"Willi Wernz was born on November 22, 1919 at Petersauer Straße 9 in Mannheim-Sandhofen. The birth room is today's studio. Marginals of this kind often lead to hasty conclusions. There is talk of being anchored in the region (“I couldn't live without the Mannemer air”), so that the so-called visits to the artist are too often absorbed into a description of the Sandhofen idyll. The illustrator of the Rhine foothills, Willi Wernz as a local artist”? Let us simply state that Bloch's concept of “home” has never been as virulent as in the postmodern era. The Transavantgarde is not international, but national or regional. For example, Enzo Cucchi's work cannot be understood without the background of his birthplace, Ancona, where he grew up and where he still works. After Sandhofen primary school, the employment office placed young Wernz at the Ludwigshafen company “Weiß und Hameier”, where he completed an apprenticeship in typesetting, offset printing and lithography. Basic training with the German Wehrmacht took place in Berlin; As a cartographer and later in the fighting troops, the war took him to Russia, France, Yugoslavia, Albania and the Czech Republic until he returned to his birthplace in 1945. The drawings from the war remained in the hospital. After an interlude with a commercial graphic artist in Heidelberg who really wanted to print bookplates despite paper rationing and a lack of books, the decision was made to try becoming an artist."

Source: Willi Wernz, Bilder un Zeichnungen 1951 - 1990, Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim 1990

Biography:

Born in Mannheim in 1919
1934-38 apprenticeship as a lettering lithographer in Ludwigshafen

1940-45 military service

1946-48 studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Willi Geiger

1954 Art Prize from the Friends of Fine Arts. v.

1956 Art Prize of the Friends of Fine Arts e. v.
Scholarship holder of the art circle in the Federal Association of German Industry

1955-78 Teaching position at the Evening Academy and Adult Education Center in Mannheim; Children's painting lessons in the Kunsthalle Mannheim

1978-80 Teaching position at the International Summer Academy for Fine Arts, Salzburg
Member of the Free Academy of Arts, Mannheim lives in Mannheim-Sandhofen
Heinz Fuchs, Willi Wernz catalog, Kunsthalle Mannheim 1961
Günther Ladstetter, catalog Weiner, Emmerich, Wernz, Galerie Lauter, Mannheim 1964
Christoph Andritzky, catalog Willi Wernz, paintings and drawings 1952-1979, Kunstverein Mannheim 1979
Heiner Weiner, leaflet Willi Wernz, works from 30 years, artists show artists, gallery in the Alte Hauptfeuerwache cultural center, Mannheim 1983
Gerd-Niels Wötzel, broadcast by Süddeutscher Rundfunk from December 2, 1983 on the exhibition Willi Wernz in the Mannheim fire station 1983 (manuscript)
Heiner Weiner, catalog of the group exhibition Sestola - Mannheim 1986 (excerpt from the text from 1983)

There is documentation on Willi Wernz in the Geißler Art Archive, Free Academy of Arts in Mannheim.

Exhibitions

1948, Mannheim Art Gallery
1951, Free Darmstadt Artists' Association
Mannheimer Quadrat, Free Academy Mannheim
1952, The Image of the World, Kunsthalle Mannheim
1954/55 Mannheimer Quadrat, Kunsthalle Mannheim
1965/56, Mannheimer Quadrat, Kunsthalle Mannheim
1966, ars viva, cultural group of German industry, Baden-Bade
1959, Tendencies 59, University of Heidelberg
1960, Traveling exhibition of Baden-Württemberg artists in France
1961, Mannheim Art Gallery
1962, Mannheim artist, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea
1964, Weiner, Emmerich, Wernz, Galerie Margarete Lauter, Mannheim
1967, Kunsthalle Mannheim (drawings)
1968, Large German art exhibition, Haus der Kunst, Munich
1969, Large German art exhibition, Haus der Kunst, Munich
1971, ars viva 71, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
1973, 6 Mannheim draftsmen, Mannheim Art Association
Large German art exhibition, Haus der Kunst, Munich Symposium of the Arts, Mannheim
1974, Studio Proportion, Wasserburg am Inn (drawings)
1976, German Artists' Association, Mainz
1978, German Artists' Association, Mannheim
Gallery in Goldgasse, Salzburg (drawings)
1979, Paintings and drawings 1952-1979, Mannheim Art Association
1983, Chemist heads (drawings), Volksbank Weinheim
Artists from the Rhine-Neckar region, Porto
1986/87, Artists show artists, gallery in the Alte Hauptfeuerwache cultural center, Mannheim
1988, Group exhibition Sestola - Mannheim
Group exhibition gallery in the Alte Hauptfeuerwache cultural center, Mannheim
1989, Volksbank Mannheim-Sandhofen (drawings)
1991, Mannheim Art Gallery

There are also exhibitions by the Rhine-Neckar and Baden-Wüttemberg artist associations.

Price on request.