PETER TOLLENS

Painting is based on paint being applied to canvas, wood, paper, or another support. The motif is just the occasion for the brushstroke. Regardless of how much reality is processed in a painting, the painting will have a reality of its own.

By renouncing narrative, Peter Tollens takes heed of Paul Cezanne, who advised to avoid topics or the ‘literary’. In his decision to make colour and/or paint the subject of his paintings, Tollens follows, for example, in the steps of Barnett Newman, ‘who always stressed that his painting is not an abstraction of anything’ (Stefan Kraus) or painters from Piet Mondrian to Robert Ryman, who described their paintings as ‘realism’ in a literal sense.

In music, sounds have an immediate presence. Listening gives rise to feelings and associations, which we also experience when we see colours. We can compare colours with sounds, Peter Tollens’ paintings with compositions. Letting the tones and their harmony sink in creates a new experience of seeing. Peter Tollens’ work is located in the synergy between seeing and hearing.

After training as a colour lithographer, Peter Tollens, born in Kleve in 1954, studied with Stefan Wewerka at Fachhochschule Köln. His works have been shown in more than 300 solo and group exhibitions in Europe and the U.S., including at institutions like Städtisches Museum Haus Koekkoek, Kolumba Museum (Cologne), Kinderbuchmuseum (Burg Wissem, Troisdorf), Berkeley Art Museum, and Museum Wiesbaden. They are in numerous public and private collections, including Kolumba Museum, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Städtisches Museum Bonn, Museum Wiesbaden, and Karl-Ernst Osthaus Museum (Hagen), as well as Albright Knox Museum (Buffalo), Berkeley Art Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the collections Mondstudio (Bad Homburg), the collection of Gaby + Wilhelm Schürmann (Aachen), the collections Wemhöner (Herford), Kienbaum (Cologne), Ege Kunst- und Kulturstiftung (Freiburg), Vass Collection (Budapest), Lutzig-Antal Collection (Debrecen), and the JPMorgan Chase & Co. Collection.