Adolf Bierbrauer

• Illustration — Anti Christianity without fear, Acrylic on canvas, 80 cm x 120 cm, 1999 • Illustration — Adolf Bierbrauer, Desperate Search of the Inner Face, somnambulistic work, Acryic on canvas, 160 cm x 200 cm, 1999 Adolf Bierbrauer grew up with two sisters, Marianne and Gisela, on Glücksburger street in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel. His father was the manager of the ironworks Association in Düsseldorf. During his high school years Bierbrauer studied piano and performed in public as a piano soloist. His piano teacher recommended the philosophical work of Rudolf Steiner to him. In 1930 Bierbrauer produced his first still life and within a year began his first figurative drawings. He created portraits of people in his neighborhood. In 1934 he traveled to the Goetheanum in Dornach (Switzerland) to study the works of Rudolf Steiner. In 1935, he began his study of medicine at the University of Marburg. He continued his study of medicine at Freiburg, Jena and at the Medical Academy in Düsseldorf. From 1940 to 1942, he served in the military service in France. In 1942, Bierbrauer was called back to Düsseldorf due to the lack of military available in Düsseldorf during World War II. He received his doctorate there in 1943 and in January 1945 he sent to the Eastern Front as a military doctor. He was captured in Wrocław and transported to Transcaucasia (Mingitschaur) to work as a roadbuilder and concrete worker as a Russian prisoner of war. During his imprisonment, on behalf of the prisoner-of-war camp management Bierbrauer painted documentary images of the geological investigations of the terminal moraines. The prisoners also worked on archaeological excavations of medean graves. He was forbidden from painting and was ordered to create portraits of the guards. In 1949, he returned to Düsseldorf where he became a volunteer physician at the University Hospital in Hamburg. From 1951 to 1953, he worked as psychotherapist at the 2nd Medical Academy in Düsseldorf, specializing in hypnosis treatments. At this time he began the creation of his first hypnosis paintings.

• Illustration — Adolf Bierbrauer, the elephantine tantrum, Bronze sculpture, 2002, Vol. 30 Bierbrauer's key works are his hypnosis pictures from the early 1950s, his somnambulistic works, and his sculptures. The focus of his work is the human being. In his early work pure representations of people, such as portraits and nudes can be found. He approached his artwork with concepts drawn from his background as a physician and psychotherapist, applying concepts of the human psyche to his work. Bierbrauer painted the hypnosis images after stories and pictures from his patients in trance. They were created after the end of World War II created until the early 1950s. Bierbrauer's art involved his work as a psychotherapist- using what he saw during hypnosis and narration from his patients, who were overcoming the personal traumas left by war. He claimed that he painted his pictures for the patients, in order to connect with them. He believed his works helped the patients while the patients' assisted his development as an artist creating works centered on the human psyche. In his understanding the artist could be a healer. With these works he had been one of the pioneers of the conceptual art movement in the 1960s in Europe. His hypnosis paintings were accompanied with Bazon Brock and a performance of Joseph Beuys washing feet. Bazon Brock wrote in his book "Der Barbar als Kulturheld" (The barbarian as a cultural hero): "The results of these images that emerged then, are ultimately that important because they are artistic formally on the absolute highest level of its time. There is nothing comparable in the '50s." (5) For Bierbrauer, since the late 1960s somnambulistic work had many parallels to works by informal artists like Emilio Vedova and Emil Schumacher. Their techniques are comparable also to the works of the abstract expressionism by Jackson Pollock or Jean-Michel Basquiat. Bierbrauer, trained by the hypnosis of his patients, began in this period to abstract from the patient's images and now betook himself into a somnambulistic, in a daydream-like state. He made paintings based on the "incorporation" of others and the search for his own identity. Bierbrauer also produced sculptures. In his bronze figures such as the elephantine tantrum from 2001 he used an expressive free, unbound to the concrete form design, which received its informal expression which is increased by the titles-finding. They appear as trash-like sculptures, mostly composed of found material (see also Arte povera), connected with glue, metal wires and tinfoil.

Adolf Bierbrauer did no publicly show case his work until age 85, because he deemed his work a private matter. He did not receive public attention until the release of his monograph, when he gained public exposure. (4)

• 2024 Kleine Nachtmeerfahrt, with works by Bianca C. Grüger und with the hypnosisipaintings by Adolf Bierbrauer, Martin Leyer-Pritzkow, Düsseldorf • 2023 The paintings of Souls with the Japanese Artist Takakazu Takeuchi, Martin Leyer-Pritzkow, Düsseldorf • 2022 VOM TRAUM ZUM BILD (From Dream to Picture) with the somnambulistic works from Adolf Bierbrauer, Martin Leyer-Pritzkow, Düsseldorf • 2022 OUR FRIENDS with works from Adolf Bierbrauer, Stefan Demary, Jårg Geismar and Hans-Jörg Holubitschka; Martin Leyer-Pritzkow, Düsseldorf • 2020 Thomas Bernstein - Adolf Bierbrauer Skulpturen (sculptures), Martin Leyer-Pritzkow, Düsseldorf • 2020 Pioneer of Social Sculpture - Part I, Adolf Bierbrauer's Hypnosispaintings, Martin Leyer-Pritzkow, Düsseldorf • 2019 ZWISCHEN WELTEN / BETWEEN WORLDS, with Armin Baumgarten, Martin Leyer-Pritzkow, Düsseldorf • 2015 Der Andere in mir – Adolf Bierbrauers Hypnosearbeiten (The other in me: Adolf Bierbrauer's hypnotic works), Onomato, Düsseldorf. • 2015 Natura nutrix- Homo vorax, Associazione Culturale Italo-Tedesca, Palazzo Albrizzi, collateral-event of the 56th Venice Biennale, Italy • 2014 Man kann es auch übertreiben (It can be overdone), Martin Leyer-Pritzkow, Düsseldorf • 2012 The Great, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf • 2012 Auf der Suche nach dem verlorenen Ich (In Search of the Lost Identity), Municipal Gallery Schwabach, Germany • 2008 Tribute to Adolf Bierbrauer, Martin Leyer-Pritzkow, Duesseldorf • 2002 The Archaic in art, Bierbrauer's works on the example of works from the collection of Prof. Hentrich, Duesseldorf • 2001 People pictures, group exhibition with works by Armin Baumgarten, Woytek Berowski, Adolf Bierbrauer and Fabrizio Gazzarri, Martin Leyer-Pritzkow, Duesseldorf • 2000 NRW Forum, solo exhibition with presentation of the Bierbrauer monograph, Düsseldorf • 1998 A. Bierbrauer, Martin Leyer-Pritzkow, Düsseldorf