Interview
Peter Backhaus
Peter Backhaus was born in 1947 in former East Germany. He lives and works in Gothenburg and Berlin. In 1968, he emigrated to Sweden where he studied philosophy, psychology, and art. For Backhaus, painting is survival.
Exploring his creativity is a way for him to keep his mental health. His paintings are internal images, that come from a level beyond time and space, beyond the personal ego, where complete stillness and total chaos coexist. He calls his style ‘Archetypical Expressionism’.
Backhaus’ art unites and spreads optimism regarding the human psyche’s ability to bring about change, in the same way art has helped him to process his personal German history. His work has been shown in many Swedish and German galleries and museums.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I grew up in Minden, a small town near Hannover. My parents fled to West Gemrany, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1950. My father was a taxman and my mother was at home with me and my sister. In 1968 I completed my diploma from the upper secondary school in Lübbecke. At that time, me and most of my generational peers felt a strong anger and frustration about our parents doings in Nazi-Germany, and in particular the enormous amount of guilt the German people had drawn upon themselves by the horrible consequences of the Holocaust. Revolution was in the air.
My reaction to all that was to immigrate as soon as I had left school and was old enough to make my own decisions. Sweden became my new homeland and there I studied philosophy, psychology, sociology and art history. I took my bachelor’s degree at the university of Gothenburg. During 1973-1978 I studied art at the Hovedskous Artschool in Gothenburg, where I later became an associate Professor. In 2000 I became the headmaster and owner of the school. Since 2014, I have retired and can now dedicate all my time to art in my studio in the Swedish countryside. I am a painter at heart. I have always loved to express myself with colors.
As a child I painted continuously and saw myself as an artist, before I even knew what it actually meant to be one. Everyone around me supported me in my drawing and painting - both my parents and in school. When I was fourteen I definitely started my journey into the art world! In school we were supposed to do a thesis project on the German expressionists, Kirchner, Heckel, Nolde and others. Each of them was to be presented on one page with a representative painting and a short biography. When I finalized the work, I presented myself in the same way as these great role models.
For this I selected a painting of mine that showed a sad clown. The teacher held up my work in front of the whole class, leafed through it, and said when he finally came to the last page: ‘And here, Backhaus has joined the great masters of the history of art!’ I was embarrassed and overwhelmed with shame; for a split second, I wondered if my cockiness had been presumptuous, but I couldn’t hear any irony in his voice. At art school I started out as a realistic painter but by different experiences in my life, I ended up as an archetypal expressionist as I call it.
To study reality with my eyes was not enough, I wanted to be more involved, a part of my painting process, not just an observer who expressed and illustrated things, thoughts and feelings. I wanted to reduce the distance between inner and outer space as much as possible and be physical. However, I believe that if I hadn’t studied reality like the old masters, I wouldn’t have been able to develop my archetypal expression in painting as I did.”
What inspires you most?
“Well, that has differed throughout the years. Between 1973, when I started art school, and 1996, it was definitely my past, my strong feelings of guilt, my anger and my situation as an immigrant that inspired me. It was rather an inner force, a strong need to purify myself that pushed me forward. In 1996 I had an exhibition, shown in different museums throughout Sweden, that I called “Unwanted lives”. Photos of unwanted people, from the early days of photography in the series “The face of madness”, to the racial theories of the beginning of the twentieth century, to still images from Nazi-Propaganda films, portraits from concentration camps and current ones from Swedish mental-institutions.
All in all, 119 portraits of unwanted people. Among them, photos of me, naked, exposed, humiliated in the same way as those historic humans had been. In the room was also a huge pyramid of soap, a performance of me, half-naked with whitewashed body, and automatically, uncontrolled written lyrics and chaotic sound walls from a synthesizer. I couldn’t have expressed myself more open and direct. From that moment on I was liberated from the past, I could feel inspiration on a different level. It was a catharsis, the end of my mourning process.
Nowadays my inspiration comes from my inner joy, from my desire to be human. But also from painting itself. As soon as there are a few colors or structures on the canvas, the actions quickly turn into a momentum of its own. Then I just follow what unfolds by necessity. For me it’s essentially no difference between what people call the real world and my inner world. I’m aware that my consciousness and all my life experiences give me the impression of an external reality, but that it’s always me who creates it.
For me, the following applies: as the inner so the outer. In my art, I want to unite differences and spread optimism on the human psyche’s ability to bring about change, in the same way art has helped me to process my personal German history. Okay, maybe there is still some darkness in me, but I’m confident with that. It keeps me from drifting away into sentimental sweetness that we can see quite a lot of these days.”
“My art is uncompromising and direct. It is unique in its poetic, musical expression. The heart is its abode. It connects with the soul's longing for freedom, co-creation and participatory commitment.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“That’s a difficult one! As I said, I work as uncontrolled and spontaneously as I can, with no plan or particular idea from the beginning. Just trying to remain in the ‘now’ as long as possible. So, from inside of me comes nothing but emptiness and life-energy without any underlying messages. On the outside it may look different, I don’t know and honestly, I try not to care. Every spectator has her or his own world to associate to, their own pair of glasses that give them ideas about what they sees and remember when being confronted with my mountains of scratched, dripping paint. To me it’s just color and energy.”
How would you describe your work?
“To begin with, I wouldn’t describe what I do as work. It’s my passion, my lifeline, my best choice in life ever, if it is a choice! I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to do anything else. It combines so many essential, beautiful elements: freedom, personal growth, body, mind, feeling, decision making, ecstasy, meditation, reflection, introspection...I could go on, it’s anything else but work. I’ve seen people on the internet who declare that “Art is work”. Maybe they want to give art a higher status or something like that, but to me it sounds like a self-proclaimed declaration of invalidity. Art is Art!”
Which artists influence you most?
“In my current life I would say, no one or maybe everyone. I let everything in through my eyes and my senses. But I don’t have favorites. It doesn’t have to be art that influences me, it can be birds, music, trees, clouds, my body, a woman, spoken words, anything that exists in this amazing world that we in our short lifetime have the unique opportunity to be guests in. I am thankful and try to be as open as I can.
When I was young and an apprentice, I had favorites of course. Many! As soon as I saw an art exhibition I was always so impressed and inspired! ‘Wow! You can do like that? Yeah, I wanna try!’ Although, I had some deeper love stories with Edward Munch, Francis Bacon and Rembrandt. But as I said, nowadays I am my own favorite and that’s enough for me.”
What is your creative process like?
“Every creative process starts on the floor. On a large area of canvas, paper or wood. Entranced, I strive to act out myself on the surface. All tools, paints and solvents that could possibly be used are at hand in the activity area. When the process ends after an hour or two, I leave the place and let everything dry. When I come back, the real expedition starts. It can be that I first attach the painting to the wall, or do meditative walks on it, or cut out parts that attract me. A search for attraction begins. The subsequent over-paintings and adaptations are almost always in oil. There is a contrast between the somewhat mute acrylic and the sensual oil paint.
The further process is sitting, looking at things, empathizing, listening to my inner voice, making decisions, remaining in the now - each time different and unpredictable. I’ve developed this to be able to make discoveries, to be able to surprise myself. My latest impulses have been to involve more concrete objects, like parts of chairs, letters, fabrics and more unpredictable items. I hade a time some years ago when I found metal to be very attractive just because of its stubbornness.”
What process, materials, techniques, etc., do you use to create your artwork?
“I wish I could start from zero every time I paint. In Zen, which I’ve practiced a lot and which has guided me to some really deep essential breakthroughs, they say: “No matter how long you have practiced, you are always a beginner.” I’ve had this kind of thinking with me my whole adult life but I can’t deny after almost fifty years of daily painting, I have gathered some experience that I’m not really able to just throw away every time I start something new. But it’s a guideline, something that helps me to be alert, to make me sensitive to new solutions, away from routine.”
What’s your favorite artwork and why?
There are many favorite artworks from the early days of my career I could talk about. My personal life and my art were identical. So the most important paintings from that time always marked deep breakthroughs on a personal level as well, like this one: “Man”.
At that time I was longing intensely for spontaneity. "Man" is the first painting I managed to carry out completely spontaneously and unplanned, without sketches or preparatory work and without any idea. On a 200 x 250 cm canvas I acted completely recklessly, let the brushes fly over the surface as they wanted, did not make any single conscious decision, painted as in trance until this picture had taken shape.
Although I still expressed myself in my familiar, well known realistic design language, I was completely unaware of what it would contain or what it actually meant. The planning, the construction, the intellectual superstructure were gone! This was one of the first steps, besides meditation and Zen practice, towards my later archetypal expressionism as I call my art now. It was many years later, through a conversation with my sister, that I became aware of what enormous depth this image had! I was able to establish a straight connection to a traumatic experience in my very earliest childhood. Something that happened to me when I was two years old.
Fantastic! No matter how you act in your creative process, you can never lie with your inner images. They are always rooted in something true and existential, beyond the layers of the conscious self, deep down in the darkness of the very earliest experiences. Many times I have shown this image to my students to encourage them to believe in what they are doing. There is a meaning in every brush stroke, every color, every form you apply on a surface, even if you actually don’t know what you are doing.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“I don’t know what an artist’s role in society is and I find it hard to grasp that from perspective above. In different societies, art has had very different roles depending on the spiritual level at any given time, the power structures, the culture, the dominating way of thinking and much more. I’m not a sociologist but for me, in our time, an artist’s actions are an important signal to his/her fellowmen to be brave, stand up for their opinion, be creative and look for the truth from a personal, subjective perspective.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“Since 1980 I have exhibited my art in many different Swedish Art galleries and museums as well as in German galleries. Nowadays my name is well known in the Swedish art community. I was represented at the Florence Biennale with three large paintings in 2021. Since 2019 I am represented by Pashmin Art Gallery in Hamburg and I have participated in numerous museum exhibitions in China.
In 2001, I was chosen to represent Swedish painting in the exhibition “Painting & Painting” at Kristinehamns Art museum in Sweden. I was one of 15 primary and contemporary Scandinavian artists together with Steinar Jakobsen (NO), Max Book (SE), Claus Carstensen (DK), Ann Edholm (SE), Leonard Forslund (DK), Anne Karin Furunes (NO), Rosa Liksom (FI), Micko Maasalo (FI), Mari Rantanen(FI), Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd (SE), Olav Christopher Jenssen (NO), Martin Bigum (DK), Marianna Uutinen (FI) and Ragna Robertsdottir (IS).”
Website: www.peterbackhaus.com
Instagram: @artatbackhaus
