Andreas Kurth, born 1944 in Leipzig, completed studies there at the Hochschule für Musik „Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy“ , and now looks back on a 43-year career as solo oboist in various German orchestras. While still in school, Kurth studied drawing and painting with R.O. Voigt and continued his artistic endeavors throughout his musical career. Following his retirement in 2009, he has turned his full attention to his second passion.

ANDREAS KURTH ANTE PORTAS

Andreas Kurth lives and works alternately in Gelsenkirchen (N.W. Germany) and Paris. His graphics, oil paintings and collages are displayed Saturdays in the “Marché de la création” by the Bastille in Paris.

Notable in his works is a creative impulse which is derived from a tactile involvement with the materials. Kurth experiments with the interaction of various mediums on paper or canvas, both abstract and representational, allowing oil, ink, gouache or sand to flow in and through one another to achieve unforeseeable constellations. He also documents, for instance the effects of time and weather on dead wood, carefully interacting with its knots and decay and enhancing these with mussels, bones and stones.

Andreas Kurth visits regularly the devastated war fields of Verdun. Even now relics of the First World War can be found amongst the earth and stones. He forms sculptured male and female dancers out of shrapnel or arranges them into collages, as in his Triptchon “Verdun 1916 – a French-German Requiem”, with its inherent admonishing monumental character.

Andreas Kurth senses in nature’s cyclic entity of birth and death, a bond with his own artistry, which seeks through creative processes an understanding of human existence oscillating between transience and continuum.