Heinz Trökes

Heinz Trökes was a German painter, printmaker and art teacher.

Biography

Trökes was born in Duisburg. After completing his Abitur in 1933, Trökes was a pupil of Johannes Itten in Krefeld from 1933 to 1936. From 1936 to 1939, he lived as a painter in Augsburg and earned his living designing textiles with the J. P. Bemberg company. In 1938, his first solo exhibition in the Galerie Nierendorf in Berlin was closed at the initiative of the Nazis. He was then expelled from the Reich Chamber of Culture and had no more opportunities to exhibit until 1945. In 1937 he met Wassily Kandinsky in Paris; the following year, he travelled to Vienna, Budapest, Yugoslavia and once again to Italy. In 1939, Trökes moved to Zurich to emigrate from there to the Dutch East Indies. The outbreak of the Second World War prevented this, however. Returning to Germany in 1940, he studied with Georg Muche in Krefeld, but was and conscripted to the Wehrmacht, until 1942 as a flak soldier in Berlin. He attended the art school of Max Dungert in his free time. He was friends with, among others, Oskar Huth, who provided him with a fake official exemption from the Wehrmacht.
In 1945, Trökes was a co-founder of the Berlin Galerie Gerd Rosen, the first private art gallery in Germany after the war, and remained artistic director until 1946. From 1946 to 1948, a series of cosmonaut-like images was created, including Die Mondkanone, Terrain der Kosmologen, Sphärische Kontraste and Zwei Welten. He was called to the Staatliche Hochschule für Architektur und Kunst in Weimar together with the painter in 1947, but finished teaching after one semester due to excessive external influence. He participated in the exhibition L’Art Allemand Moderne, Deutsche Kunst der Gegenwart in Baden-Baden. During the blockade from 1948 to 1949, he stayed in Berlin, in Rodenbach near Neuwied on the Rhine, then again in Berlin. In 1949 he married Renata Severin. Trökes published an article in the magazine Les Temps modernes, Paris on La peinture et le public en Allemagne. L’inflation d’expositions et le scandale qu’elles provoquent. From 1950 to 1952 he won the Blevin-Davis competition in Munich, stayed in Paris and befriended with Wols and Paul Celan. Trökes joined the Rixes group with Roberto Matta, Jaroslaw Serpan, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Zañartu, among others. Participation in the weekly Jour fixe revolving around André Breton.
Heinz and Renée Trökes moved to Ibiza in 1952. Here, he created many island pictures, often of a topographical character. He won the Hallmark competition, New York City. In 1954 his son, Jan Manuel, was born. Also in 1955, he received the Deutscher Kritikerpreis and teaching offers from art schools and academies in Berlin, Karlsruhe, Zurich, Stuttgart and Frankfurt, which he, however, declined. In 1955, he participated in documenta 1 in Kassel. and 1964.
In 1962 he was called to the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste / State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. Ben Willikens was one of his students among others. From 1965, Trökes taught painting at the Hochschule für bildende Künste, today Berlin University of the Arts. In the same year he also designed a Church window in Leonberg near Stuttgart. In 1966, he experimented with Georg Muche on Helio-Klischographs in Kassel with the aim of manufacturing electrically controlled prints. The quiet images were succeeded by intensively coloured ones. Many of his topics seem rather being influenced by his travels around the world.
Heinz Trökes died in Berlin on 22 April 1997.

Selected works

Die Mondkanone, 1946; oil on canvas Sphärische Kontraste, 1948; oil on canvas, Neue Nationalgalerie, BerlinAm Mars, 1948; oil on canvas, Neues Museum, WeimarIn der Luft und im Wasser, 1950; oil on canvas, The Busch-Reisinger Museum/Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, USAZwischen Wolken und Kristallen, 1951; oil on canvas. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, USAEcho, 1954; oil on canvas, Lehmbruck Museum, DuisburgFür Artisten, 1954; oil on canvas, Sprengel Museum HannoverWunschbild für Geologen 1956; oil on canvas, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Glass mosaic in the Katharinenschule, Hamburg-Hafencity. Production: Puhl & Wagner. Originally for the XI Triennale, Milan. Acquired in 1958/59 by the Hamburg Senate and restored and realised in 2009/10 by the Münchner Hofmanufaktur. Former location: Volksschule an der Katharinenkirche.Lettern einer Schrift ; etching on laid paper, 1960. Museum of Modern Art, New York, USAAugenreise, 1968; Rembrandt Verlag, Berlin – Library of Congress, Washington

Selected exhibitions

1949 Solo exhibition in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum, Krefeld. Participation in the Kunst in Deutschland 1930–1949 exhibition, Zurich
1953 Solo exhibitions in the Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, and in the Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig, participation in the 2nd São Paulo Art Biennial
1954 Exhibition participation: duitse kunst na 1945, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum
1955 Participation in documenta I, Kassel
1959 Participation in documenta II, Kassel
1964 Participation in documenta III, Kassel
1966 Solo exhibition in the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro
1972 Participation in Continental Painting and Sculpture, 1942–72 in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery
1979 Solo exhibitions in the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and in the Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg
1983 Solo exhibition in the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin
1985 Exhibition participation in the Nationalgalerie in Berlin: Kunst in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1985
1995 Solo exhibition in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett
2003 Werke und Dokumente – Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg. A catalogue with 122 pages and numerous colors and black-and-white illustrations appeared for the exhibition.
2003 Über dem Realen, Werke und Dokumente aus fünfzig Jahren ; Neues Museum Weimar
2009 Participation: Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures; Los Angeles County Museum of Arts – LACAMA; Kunst und Kalter Krieg; Deutsche Positionen 1945– 1989, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. Then: Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
2013 ELDORADO. Zum 100. Geburtstag von Heinz Trökes, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg
2018 Participation: INVENTUR – ART IN GERMANY 1943–1955, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, USA

Legacy

The written legacy, including the journals, was endowed to the Deutsches Kunstarchiv in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. The sketchbooks were donated to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin.

Catalogues raisonnés

Markus Krause: Heinz Trökes. Werkverzeichnis. Prestel Verlag, Munich/Berlin/London/New York 2003,.
Online catalogue raisonné on the official website of