Thitz - Utopian Civilizations

"To truly paint big cities, one must not depict an imagined city, but rather attempt to capture the felt experience itself, with all its sounds, noise, dust, and smells. In a second of city life, an infinite amount of information fits — this city is what I mean, these are my inner images," asserts Thitz.

For the artist, born in 1962, travel serves as the foundation of his painting. His journeys have taken him to Brazil, Morocco, Italy, Iceland, Turkey, Norway, Sweden, Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, India, Nepal, South Africa, and the United States... Along the way, he collects artifacts of urban cultures — and what better represents a civilization than shopping bags? Thitz integrates them into his cityscapes, with their handles transforming into visual ropes for the leap from stark reality into hidden dimensions. Bags from around the world lie beneath his city landscapes, and in ever-new layers of paint, a fascinating web of associations unfolds between bags and painting. Handles break through the canvas, standing within the image or extending beyond its edges. In this coupling, new images emerge beyond a superficially visible reality, images in which feelings, intuitions, tensions, and moods are filtered. The colors begin to glow, thousands of figures populate facades, seas of houses, water surfaces, and even the sky.

New York, Paris, Venice — we see only fragments of the highlights of urban architecture. Thitz's references to places are coded. The artist is not concerned with striking motifs or recognizable city maps.

Instead, rhythm and ornamental principles — reflection, sequencing, repetition — dictate the composition. Uneven perspective and multi-faceted orientation are hallmarks of his works. Thitz's visions of the metropolis explode across the picture space, disregarding the boundaries of the canvas. It seems that Thitz is fascinated by the anarchic geometry of expanding cities and the specific romance of modern life.

Now, Thitz is designing an urban utopia: the city of tomorrow. It is as lively as ever, but now the air seems cleaner, and the noise level more moderate. Instead of a hypertrophied depiction of the chaotic urban reality, Thitz creates counter-proposals, visions of a joyful life.

Thitz (*1962) studied painting at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart under Sonderborg starting in 1983. His first bag paintings emerged as early as 1985, and in 1989 he received his diploma from the Stuttgart Academy.

In the same year, Thitz began a master's program with Pijuan at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona. In 1993, the International Society of Fine Arts invited Thitz to collaborate. In 1994, he received the promotion award from the Association of Visual Artists of Württemberg, and in 1996, a scholarship from the "Centre d'Art Contemporani Piramidón." The artist's works are part of numerous public and private collections around the world.