Jörg Shimon Schuldhess (1941- 1992) - Grüner Bart

Jörg Shimon Schuldhess (actually Jörg Anton Schulthess; born 4 June 1941 in Basel; died 15 June 1992 there) was a Swiss draftsman, painter, graphic artist and writer. In addition to pictures on canvas and paper, he also designed musical instruments, ceramics and small sculptures. He published books with image reproductions and texts.
Schuldhess died, at age 51, of heart failure. According to his wish, his ashes were buried in Calcutta in the Ganges.
Painting technique and painting style
He spontaneously developed his image motif, without any sketch. He never painted from a model or from nature. His motifs—human, animal, plant or architecture—are not depictions of outer reality, but of symbolic significance.
Schuldhess understood his painting as engaged art, not l’art pour l’art. (Quote: “I am not a painter of the fine arts.” Film “Der Riss” DRS 1986/87.[6]) Many of his paintings relate to world political events, to events of war and acts of violence.
Schuldhess’s work has been recorded as comprehensively as possible in a complete works catalog. Of this, the first four volumes were printed; they contain the works from 1959 to 1973. In total, photos and data document a little more than 7,000 individual works.
Der Riss (The Crack)
A special symbol in Schuldhess’s visual language is the painted “crack,” which cuts through many of his oil paintings lengthwise, crosswise or diagonally. “The crack makes visible a disturbance; order is broken.” In the motif of the “Punishment Task,” the entire surface is filled with stick figures, enclosed in grid-like cells. The crack reveals an underlying homogeneous layer. In some paintings the crack encloses hazy figures. A red line runs through the crack in the images from his final years.
With the film “Der Riss” from 1986/87, Swiss television documented the significance of the crack as a motif and as an expression of Schuldhess’s personal engagement.
Writings
“I am not an artist; I only paint what I cannot say.”[8] In his books, Schuldhess combines reproductions of his paintings with texts to convey his message. In the books from the years before 1980, the themes are related to general questions of life.