Horst Janssen:Excessive life - expressive art

The artist Horst Janssen lived excessively, was considered a womanizer and a brawler and drunkard. He was in custody on suspicion of murder - and was a thoroughbred artist.

by Vivienne Schumacher

Horst Janssen was a draftsman. He remained constant in his technique throughout his life:For him, drawing was not - like for many others - a preparation for a later work, but the work itself. As an internationally known artist, he decisively shaped the image of the Hamburg art scene in the 1960s. He was considered intelligent, intense and crazy, lived excessively. He has never made a secret of his alcoholism.

Janssen is studying at the Landeskunstschule am Lerchenfeld

Horst Janssen was born in Hamburg on November 14, 1929. He grew up in Oldenburg with his single mother and his grandparents. He never got to know his birth father. When first his grandfather and then his mother die of tuberculosis, Aunt Anna takes her 16-year-old nephew to Hamburg. Even as a young student at the National Political Educational Institute (Napola) in Emsland, his talent for drawing was evident. In Hamburg, his aunt enrolled him at the Landeskunstschule am Lerchenfeld, where he studied from 1946 to 1951, and financed his education. From the very beginning he was a master student of Alfred Mahlau, and he published his first drawings while he was still a student.

First exhibition in the gallery of Hans Brockstedt

In 1947 a drawing of him appeared in the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit". A year later, the Kasperl book "Are you all there?" was published, in which 18-year-old Horst Janssen illustrated the Kasperl verses written by Rolf Italiaander during the Second World War. Later he also writes texts for his own works. At the age of 23, Janssen received a Lichtwark scholarship from the Hanseatic City of Hamburg. First professional successes and further scholarships follow. In 1956 the young artist exhibited colored woodcuts in his own apartment. A year later his first public exhibition takes place - in the gallery of Hans Brockstedt in Hanover.

His first honor was the art prize of the city of Darmstadt in 1964. The following year, the city of Hamburg presented Janssen with the Edwin Scharff Prize, a prize that honors artists whose works shape the cultural life of the Hanseatic city. He experienced the breakthrough of his career in 1965 with his exhibition at the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover, which was then shown in various major German cities:Darmstadt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Lübeck and in Basel, Switzerland. In 1968, Janssen won first prize for graphics at the Venice Biennale.

Many marriages and children:turbulent private life

Parallel to his artistic career, Horst Janssen is going through a turbulent time in his private life. Early in his career he fathers his first son with a married woman. Clemens was born in 1950. Three years later he is in custody on suspicion of murder out of jealousy and is finally sentenced to a suspended prison sentence for drunkenness. In 1955 he married Marie Knauer, with whom he had a daughter a year later. In 1959 the two divorced. In the same year he married again, but the marriage to Birgit Sandner only lasted a few weeks. In 1960 he finally tried again and walked down the aisle with Verena von Bethmann-Hollweg. A year later, his son Philip sees the light of day. In 1968, however, this marriage also ended in divorce.

In the 1970s, Janssen devoted himself to the subject of nature

In the 1970s, the bon vivant, who can no longer shake off his reputation as a womanizer, brawler and drunkard, discovers the landscape. Having previously drawn mainly caricatures, portraits and flowers, he now increasingly devotes himself to drawing and etching nature. The city of Mannheim awarded him the Schiller Prize in 1975 and a year later showed a retrospective of his graphic works in the Kunsthalle. Two years later, the Stadtmuseum Oldenburg exhibits many of his posters, which he also used to announce his work shows.

Vienna, Tokyo, Moscow:paintings exhibited all over the world

At the beginning of the 1980s, the artist achieved his international breakthrough. Exhibitions of his artworks take place in Vienna, Tokyo, Oslo and Paris, Novosibirsk and Moscow. Major American museums have a traveling exhibition of his work. At the same time he devoted himself more and more to writing. In 1987 the first volume of his autobiography "Hinkepott" was published, two years later the second volume "Johannes".

His numerous relationships with women did not diminish throughout his life. Horst Janssen has been living with Gesche Tietjens since his third divorce. In the early 1970s, they traveled to the Scandinavian countries together. Shortly thereafter, however, Janssen separated from his pregnant partner, who gave birth to his fourth and last child in 1973.

Janssen died of a stroke in 1995

On May 19, 1990, Horst Janssen suffered a serious accident. At the age of 61 he fell from the balcony of his house in Hamburg-Blankenese - and with him several tubs full of acid, which he used for etching. He is threatened with blindness from acid burns, which fortunately does not occur. He continued to work intensively and celebrated successes:in the 1990s, exhibitions took place in Dresden, Tokyo, Oslo, Leipzig and Hamburg. In 1992 he received honorary citizenship from the city of Oldenburg, which in 1995 presented a large exhibition of his skills. In the same year, Janssen suffers a stroke and dies on August 31.

Oldenburg honors Horst Janssen with a museum

In 1997 - two years after his death - the Hamburger Kunsthalle set up the Janssen cabinet. In the Gallery of Contemporary Art, Horst Janssen's graphic work is shown in constantly changing exhibitions. The Horst Janssen Museum in Oldenburg opened its doors in 2000.