Hirthammer’s current work stands under the premise of the rediscovery of the ideals of the Renaissance. He places nature at the very center of intense observation. The nature studies of Albrecht Durer and his contemporaries arose from a scientific interest in nature; his nature studies are characterized by emotion and wonder.
The most recent works by Josef Hirthammer are strongly magnified, detailed and extremely time-consuming drawings of flowers, flower stems, and seeds, using colored pencils, crayons, and pencils, whose altogether realistic execution is quasi destroyed through vigorous overpainting and overdrawing. These destructive gestures symbolize the irrational destruction of nature by man.
Hirthammer views these works as a documentation of presently existing flora which we humans are systematically reducing and ultimately will eradicate. They are wonderful parts of that nature which surrounds us, the world in which we all live. Man is destroying, fully consciously, the basis of his own existence. Greed, egoism and hunger for power are destroying flora and fauna und ultimately man himself, his own species.
With his pictures he would like to illustrate the aesthetics of nature, the beauty of an individual flower, the inherent forces within the smallest seed. We humans must once again learn to love nature, for we only protect what we really love.
