HARTMUT RUEGER

Hartmut Rueger, born in Heidenheim, Germany in 1944, began his study of art in Istanbul in 1965. From 1965 to 1972 he studied painting at the art academies of Stuttgart and Nuremberg. In 1970 he became a master student and won the youth prize for painting and graphic art at the Ulm Artists' Guild. From 1971 to 1977 he worked as an art teacher and in 1976-77 he was an instructor at the Nuremberg Academy. He has worked freelance since 1978, and, in 1980, received a grant and award from the state of Bavaria, in addition to several other awards. He is also known for his numerous solitary travels from which he returned with many of his drawings. Included among his  travels were Siberia and Uzbekistan in 1979, the Pyrenees in 1980, Togo and Egypt in 1981, the Taygetos Mountains (where he also lived) in 1982 and, beginning in 1986, India, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Mountain Moses in Ararat.

Hartmut Rueger is considered an artist whose secret metaphoric and sometimes strangely encoded mysticism separate him from the superficial art scene. On his extended travels, Rueger has attempted to discover the secret of otherness, thereby developing a language of drawing that makes it possible for him to express the seemingly obvious in a transcendental way. Thus, Rueger's drawings are not only of interest to the artist, the aesthete, or the visually oriented person. Pictures with this signature speak to each individual, whether or not he or she wishes it, whether or not he or she knows it. In 2002 he died in his home in France, where he worked the past years in a 400-year old house.