Josef Hirthammer is considered one of the most versatile artists of our time and has created a large number of works of art in the 40 years of his artistic activity. Over the years, he has intensified the two main areas of "contemporaries" and "nature" as primary fields of creativity and has repeatedly redesigned them.
His latest portraits dissolve the parallel existence of photography, painting and digital design and are now manifested as a general innovation in art. The respective, hitherto independent techniques are inseparably blended and result in a novel stylistic device in design. At the same time, these representations of people are an important contemporary document of the current appearance of man.
Hirthammer's nature art impressively sensitizes the almost lost sense for nature and its content of creation. Flower petals embedded in wax shine like a jewel from the milky kerosene. From a purely aesthetic point of view, this deathly coating turns the enclosed nature into a high-quality art object with unimagined intensity. Tiny seeds mutate into imposing sizes and contain a justified criticism of our genetic research.
Another essential area of the creative art work are his non-objective color paintings. Here it is primarily about the sensitive resolution of the two-dimensional pictorial space. Isolated spots of color rise from the flat picture plane and strive into space. The third dimension is touched, the color surface becomes partially plastic. Josef Hirthammer works in front of, behind and through the canvas. What is worked on from behind becomes visible plasticity in front. Found color parts are integrated into the two-dimensional color surfaces. This pictorial design remains exclusively in the non-representational realm. Only the composition, the color and its partly plastic striving may work.
The objects and sculptures after angelic visions of Hildegard von Bingen complement his oeuvre in an impressive way. Powerful head segments in bronze, plaster and clay, fragile bodies made of wax and adorable little bronze figures illustrate his idea of the angel, detached from any esotericism.
"The diversity of art is in my head. Diverse are also my fields of activity. And just as diverse are my works."
