The day will come when we print "EARTH" on our address labels.
Earth is our home. Space is nature, our environment ...
The fantastic quality of the Universe and the absurdity of our existence fascinates me"
Andreas Nottebohm is an artist. He was born in
Eisenach,
East Germany, on October 13th 1944.
After studying art in
Munich between 1965 and 1969 he moved to
Paris France to study
etching.
It was here that he began discovered that
aluminium sheets (having previously been used in the printing
process) make a cheap alternative to canvas. After becoming interested in this medium he then,
in 1971, began four years of
lithography studies in
Saltzburg,
Austria.
Since 1978 Nottebohm has made numerous visits to the USA. He has famously been commissioned by NASA on
many occasions. As the quote at the top indicates, Nottebohm is fascinated by space.
Many of his paintings would make great cover art for Sci-Fi books.
The smallest - and most intricately detailed - Nottebohm paintings are a mere 3.5 x 2 inches.
These he calls 'Universes'. They are tiny in comparison to his largest works,
which are 80 x 60 inches. The biggest of all are not rectangular, but concave
dishes 93 inches wide, 48 high and 11 deep.
Nottebohm's paintings have abstract and meaningless names like KN-1425 .
He works largly with acrylic paint, airbrushed on to aluminium. The aluminium, which is first
subjected to disk sanding and drilling, reflects light differently depending on the shapes and patterns
ground in to it. This creates an almost hologromatic effect whereby every movement of the viewer
reveals a slightly different picture. It also means that reproducing the work photographically can never
do it justice as only one facet can be captured.