Biography

Born in Pomerania, Germany, at Treptow an der Rega (now Trzebiatów, Poland), Egon Altdorf (1922–2008) moved in 1924 to Berlin, where he experienced a liberal upbringing, developing early interests in visiting galleries, museums and the theatre, as well as a passion for jazz. He was drafted into the army in 1941. Turning down a commission, he served instead for two years as a corporal in the communications unit, with Rommel in North Africa, before being captured and held as a Prisoner of War in Texas, USA, until the end of the war. During these years he wrote poetry and made his first sculpture in clay: small acts of defiance he described as ‘making culture behind the barbèd wire’. By late 1945 Altdorf had been selected to take part in a two-month education programme at Rhode Island. The selection process was rigorous, and the few who graduated successfully were issued with passes to ensure a safe return to Germany. On his release in 1946, Altdorf discovered that his mother had died in Berlin and his father was missing, presumed dead, on the eastern front. Alone, and with his pass from the Getty-Wetherill project, he began a new life as a journalist and art student in Wiesbaden.

In the early post-war years, religious imagery provided a sense of continuity for Germany’s population of predominantly Lutheran or Catholic churchgoers, fulfilling a hunger for spiritual values as urgent as the country’s need for physical reconstruction. Altdorf’s first woodcuts, made using salvaged wood, were exhibited in an exhibition of contemporary Christian art, in Mainz, in 1949. His parents had been Catholic and Protestant, and although these early prints were steeped in Biblical symbolism, their imagery was almost invariably offbeat, suggesting the artist’s challenging of tradition as well as his own, profoundly felt, beliefs. Altdorf was motivated always to look beyond surfaces, to search deeply, to listen attentively. He described this mission as grappling with a ‘primal river, which is eternal and powerful and will steadily nourish the roots of our essential being, as long as a human draws spiritual breath’.

During a scholarship research visit to England and Scotland, in 1951, Altdorf studied cathedrals and ancient carvings. He visited London, where he saw the Festival of Britain. His visit was facilitated through meeting, the previous year, the young Scottish artist and model, Diana Wilson, whom he would later marry. Staying in London with Diana, and working in her studio, he studied the collections of the Tate and British Museum. Then, in 1952, Altdorf won a prize in the German/Swiss section of the international competition on the theme of the ‘Unknown Political Prisoner’. Travelling to England to attend the prizewinners’ exhibition at the Tate in January 1953, he was introduced by the British Council to some of Britain’s most talented sculptors, among them Henry Moore, Eduardo Paolozzi, Lynn Chadwick and Reg Butler. The experience proved seminal for a young German artist, whose opportunities to encounter contemporary art had been limited by war service, internment and post-war restrictions.

Altdorf would remain committed to a dialogue across borders, religions and cultures. He made sculptures with visionary titles and large-scale symbolic woodcuts; he also collaborated on innovative architectural projects combining sculptural and painted elements. Throughout, his work displayed a strong religious or spiritual sense, as well as a desire to unite communities. Between 1966 and 1983 he designed glass, sculptural fittings and textiles for the rebuilt Jewish synagogue at Wiesbaden, whose wartime destruction he had earlier memorialised with a basalt column inscribed with his own words: ‘The world’s conscience is love’.

It was in his late woodcuts that Altdorf brought together most clearly his thoughts on creation. Increasingly large in format, these woodcuts were often worked through several stages, as seen in the triptych, Una Terra Sancta, whose different states date from 1982 and 1998, printed in silver, then gold. The first woodcut depicts dawn, as the winged sun rises. The second is a ‘conversation with the earth’, as a seedpod, pregnant with life, is outlined against the sun. Finally, in ‘Magna Mater’, humankind is made manifest.

During his last decade, Altdorf focused on poetry, publishing three volumes with covers designed by himself which relate to his woodcuts and sculpture. In Barcelona, probably in the 1960s, he is known to have met the painter Antoni Tàpies. What did he take from this meeting? Perhaps a shared interest in spiritual symbolism, or an insight into the working method of an artist with a different approach. Altdorf was always eager for debate. Never insular, he was proud to be European.