Sprotte Siegward (1913-2004), Storm on the Beach, c. 1980

Siegward Sprotte(1913 in Potsdam - 2004 Kampen on Sylt), Storm on the Beach , around 1980. Offset lithograph, 17 cm x 24 cm (image), 37.5 cm x 46.5 cm (sheet size), signed “S.[iegward] Sprotte” in pencil lower left, identified as copy no. 48/200 lower right.

- Paper with scattered creases in the wide margin, otherwise in fresh, color-saturated condition

- The Language of Seeing -

In the late 1950s Siegward Sprotte made the artistic decision to abandon the human figure in order to devote himself entirely to the pictorial exploration of the relationship between "seeing and saying". He developed new forms of articulating the 'language of painting', which do not simply reproduce what is seen, but produce what is depicted of their own accord. Thus, the lithograph does not show a storm on the beach as it would appear to the eye on the beach, but rather forms of color from which the stormy landscape emerges. The reduced color forms create an expressive tension against the light blue background: The yellow rounded areas represent the beach, the brown the rocks, and the blue the seawater. Behind them, the line-shaped blue forms create the sea, and the red ones above it the stormy sky and a rain front. This pictorial language creates the "storm on the beach" before our eyes and allows us to see the North Sea in a completely new way.

About the artist

The artist Born in Potsdam, Sprotte met the plant breeder and garden philosopher Karl Foerster at the age of 14, who influenced his nature-based artistic work. After his first plant illustrations for Foerster, he became a student of Karl Hagemeister from 1930 to 1933 and traveled with him to Lohme on the island of Rügen to study. From 1931 he also studied at the Berlin Art Academy. He was a student of Emil Orlik until 1933 and of Kurt Wehlte, Maximilian Klewer, and Kurt Hadank from 1933 to 1938. In 1935, Sprotte traveled to Nida on the Curonian Spit, Bornholm, and Copenhagen, where he discovered the dune landscape as an artistic subject. From 1936 to 1939, he followed the footsteps of the Old Masters in Florence, Assisi, Arezzo, Siena, Paestum, and Naples.

During the Nazi era, Sprotte was a member of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts and was represented at the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich. Sprotte was drafted in 1940 and discharged in 1944 due to illness. After the war, he moved to Kampen on the island of Sylt. There, in 1951, he founded the Kampen Studio Talks, which were held for 50 years. The artist spent his summers on Sylt and most of his winters in Italy, France, Greece and Portugal.

In 1953/54, Sprotte produced the series "Köpfe der Gegenwart" (Heads of the Present) and portrayed Jean Gebser, Hermann Hesse, José Ortega y Gasset and Karl Jaspers, among others. In 1958 he decided to stop portraying people and to devote himself entirely to the pictorial-philosophical dialogue of "seeing and saying," about which Sprotte also wrote reflections. He deepened this connection on numerous further study trips, which took him as far as Morocco.

In 1992, the Siegward Sprotte Foundation was established in Potsdam.

"The world looks at you sightedly, it returns your gaze.”

Siegward Sprotte