Ladies and gentlemen, it is an honour and a pleasure for me to welcome you here on behalf of the Kunstverein Stadt-Schmallenberg e.V. and to introduce the painter Peter Valentiner and some of his works.
Peter Valentiner was born in 1941. He began painting at the age of 18. This means that he has been working on his paintings for almost 30 years now, some of which I got to know a few days ago. It would be presumptuous of me, after this brief acquaintance, to force myself interpretatively into his work and into him, almost necessarily hurting him and his paintings, to place myself unnecessarily between you, mDudH, and his works. Only your own sensitive willingness can ultimately succeed in creating access to these images.
However, as far as I can support you on your way to the paintings of P.V. with some facts from the LEbene and personal statements of the artist himself, I would like to do so.
P.V., born in Copenhagen in 1941, lived in Paris from 1949, began painting in 1959 at the age of 18, at the same time as studying at the art academy in Tours. In 1962, at the age of 21, he went to Madrid for some time.
Back in France, he co-founded numerous artists' associations and galleries, won the 7th Paris Biennale in 1971, received a scholarship from the Rodin Museum, was a member of the "Comitée du salon de laJeune Peinture", Paris, from 1973 to 1975, and has been a lecturer at the European Academy of Fine Arts in Trier since 1979. He now lives and works in Cologne, Berlin and Paris. His paintings can be found in many private and public collections, including the collection of contemporary art of the National Museum at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
After exhibitions in Düsseldorf, Cologne, Trier, Saarbrücken, Geneva, Madrid, Lisbon and Paris, among others, in private galleries and public museums, P.V. logically finds his way to Schmallenberg, invited by the art association of this town, whose deputy chairwoman got to know him at the art academy in Trier.
This gives you the opportunity to meet a proven representative of the European avant-garde on site and to witness the contemporary art process when you try to understand P.V.'s paintings.
What does P.v. himself say about understanding his paintings? and I quote:
I would like to join the artist's invitation:
Direct your contemplation, your open sensibility to the works on display:
You will discover pictures of shocking beauty and come closer to a secret of modern, so. abstract painting: How balance and tension, movement and space emerge from the arrangement of form and colour, without the need for the random, narrative, optical fiction of so-called representational painting.
P.V. will be happy to discuss with you the numerous questions that will certainly arise.
I thank you for your attention, which I only ask for one last moment to thank Resate Falke in particular, who has made her house available for this exhibition.