Siegfried Glos – Bringing Medieval Cologne Back to Life Through Art
I was born in 1943 just outside of Cologne, and have called Cologne my home since then. My father, who was drafted into the military in WWII, fell in Russia the year I was born. He was a musician, but his dream had always been to become a painter. As a teenager I worked as a plumber, welder, and locksmith and when I was 19 years old I came in contact with painting for the first time.
A friend encouraged me to try to paint natural landscapes using watercolor and my mom, after seeing my work, and unbeknownst to me, enrolled me in the Kölner Werkschulen. The entrance exam took 3 days, and from 150 applicants only 20 were accepted and I couldn’t believe my luck that I was one of them. From 1963 to 1970 I studied painting, mainly under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Otto Gerster. In 1968, we traveled through the USA for three months and this is where I encountered PopArt, which had a big influence on me.
I worked all kinds of odd jobs to support my career as an artist, and also held a more stable job as scene painter for television. Around 1998 I began to be deeply interested in the history of the city of Cologne. It happened by coincidence: I had a bucket of a dark blue paint left over from another project, and it seemed like a shame to just throw it out, so I was flipping through a book for ideas, and I came across a painting that I liked by Jakob and Wilhelm Scheiner. I adapted it into a night time scene (so I could use up my blue paint). It happened to be a painting of an 1882 city gate, the Schaafentor. I liked it, and I realized that I knew hardly anything about medieval Cologne. From that day on, I became a regular at Cologne’s city archive, learning everything I could about my city’s wall and its gates.
Since then my main work as an artist has evolved around making the Cologne from the Middle Ages come back to life through art. I have completed 54 paintings so far, and my hope is that the works will be acquired by a cultural institution or foundation so they can be exhibited together.
More about what I do and why
My project of painting medieval Cologne was inspired when I learned that Cologne’s city wall was the most impressive fortification north of the Alps, more powerful than the walls of Paris, Avignon or London. There are only a few photographs of the city wall, all from shortly before it was taken down. In my research I found some historic photographs, and drawings, too, and I make them the basis for my paintings. After the research phase, it usually takes me 2-3 months to finish a painting. I hope that my paintings help replace lost memories. I do not depict people because between 1180 and 1880, when the wall was knocked down, fashion trends obviously changed quite a bit.
What I’ve learned
In the beginning, it surprised me to see that so many people were fascinated by the topic of Cologne’s history. But then after learning more and more about it, I was surprised more people weren’t interested.
I learned that the canvases themselves don’t always speak to people enough. Usually, it’s the accompanying talks that I give that really bring the topic to life. Connecting the gates that I paint with anecdotes, with little facts about daily life in medieval Cologne, and with the circumstances at the time, has turned out to be a big success.
How I work
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