Horst Janssen - Lithography

Lithography

In the early 1950s, he received a commission from the paper manufacturer Guido Dessauer for a portrait of his father-in-law, the diplomat Friedrich von Keller, followed by other portraits of family members. Janssen was able to create his first lithographs using the technical equipment of the Aschaffenburger Buntpapierfabrik. His early lithographs were shown in 2000 by the Hamburger Kunsthalle. They included "Baumwall" (Tree Mound; 1957); his first self-portraits, such as "Selbst-innig" (Intimate with Self; 1966) and poster designs, influenced by Ben Shan, for his own exhibitions. Another self-portrait, "Selbst singend" (Self, singing), shows the artist with wide open mouth, as if expressing "tiefe Welt- und Gottesverzweiflung" (profound despair about the world and God), according to a reviewer. He changed a lithograph by Oskar Kokoschka, picturing himself upright, the other of two figures kneeling, titled "So liebt mich Oskar - Ja!" (Oskar loves me like that - Yes!). The exhibition also showed a piece,on which Janssen and his colleague André Thomkins had pictured each other, together with Thomkins' aphorism "Alles nicht wissen, heißt alles verzeihen" (To not know all means forgive all).

In 1955, he married Marie Knauer and in 1956, had a second child, a daughter, Katrin (nicknamed Lamme). During this period, he worked on a series of large-scale color woodcuts that were displayed in his apartment in 1957. Janssen gained recognition and had an exhibition in Hanover in the Hans Brockstedt Gallery in 1957. After this successful show, he suddenly switched to etching, becoming a pupil of Paul Wunderlich, whom he later considered a rival. His marriage to Marie ended in divorce in 1959. His art was now influenced by art brut and Jean Dubuffet. A new marriage, to Birgit Sandner, was followed by a separation a few weeks later. The following year, 1960, he married Verena von Bethmann Hollweg who, in 1961, gave birth to his third child, a son named Philip.