Here on this pages are some of my works from the last thirty years, mostly oil or acrylic on canvas. Many of my paintings are integrated into series I take up from time to time again, others stand alone as an art short story. But there is a thematic thread that runs through all my works. . .
From the very beginning my works revolve around the determination of the position and localization of the human being in time, the depths of his psyche, his mortality and its coordinates in space. (But above all about the game with colors and shapes)
I grew up in a small mining town in North Rhine Westphalia / Germany during the 60s.
Around 1969, when I was 12, I saw in the shop window of a pharmacist a poster as a advertising for headache pills. I was so smitten that I wanted to do something like this. I bought ink and started drawing (later I asked the pharmacist for the poster. It was H R Giger´s Playmate and I have it till today).
During the 80s I moved to Hamburg /Germany. Between 86 and 92 I run the underground gallery Abriss on the Hafenstrasse at St. Pauli, a living quarter of Bars , Prostiutes, anarchy and squatters.
In the middle of the 70s I started to study, first Design at the Folkwangschule in Essen and then Art at the Academy in Düsseldorf. Then a year of study in Amsterdam was added...
My main place of residence is Hamburg, where I still work in my two studios. So far my works have been shown in Amsterdam, Paris, London, Fort Collins, Hamburg and other German Cities
With a subtle minimalistic approach, Pittjes Hitschfeld creates work in which a fascination with the clarity of content and an uncompromising attitude towards conceptual and minimal art can be found. The work is aloof and systematic and mostly a cool and neutral imagery is used. The rejection of classical painting with its backgrounds, perspectives and landscapes gives the objects depicted an appearance of size and monumentality up to the sacred, the mostly empty, often rough backgrounds contrast sharply with the detail and smoothness of the depicted.
His imagery is extremely complex, every detail of his works is intentional.
It is a rejection of the primacy of reason and the principles of modernity, with its belief in progress, emphasised since the Enlightenment, and a turn to aspects of human affectivity and emotionality.
This distinguishes him as a resolute representative of postmodernism.
Dr.L.Seyfert
Art Historian
