eter Grämer is Germany's answer to the Contemporary Realist movement. In the mid-1960s many painters went through an educational system dominated by an establishment dismissive of representational painting. The Contemporary Realists are a loose group of artists literate in the concepts of Modern Art, who chose, in spite of their training, to work in a more traditional form. Among the best-known artists associated with this movement are Neil Welliver, William Bailey, and Philip Pearlstein.

Grämer was born in 1939 in Chemnitz, Germany. Ten years later, when the German Democratic Republic was founded, the city became part of East Germany. Grämer studied industrial design at the Fachschule für angewandte Kunst in Potsdam from 1957 to 1960. In 1960 he began fine arts studies at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in West, Berlin, a year before the Berlin wall was built. He continued at the HFBK until 1966. Since 1969 Grämer has had regular solo exhibitions in Europe and the United States, in Berlin, Hannover, London and Los Angeles, among other cities.

Peter Grämer "Rote Ziegelmauer davor kleiner Baum" Oil on canvas 120 x 120 cm

Peter Grämer: I lived in East Germany and when I was 18 I went to Potsdam to study at the Fachschule für angewandte Kunst. It was a school for industrial design. We were doing designs for carpets and other practical applied arts but I really wasn't satisfied there. I talked to a friend of mine in Potsdam and he said that the art school ( the Hochschulle at Weissensee ) in East Berlin only accepted one student per semester. So I applied in West Berlin at the HFBK as it was called then, the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst on Hardenbergstrasse. I studied there for six years from 1959 to 1966.

Georg Baselitz "Großer Nacht im Eimer", 1962/63 Oil on canvas 250 x 180 cm Museum Ludwig Köln, Germany

Eugen Schönebeck "Mao Tse-Tung", 1965 Oil on canvas 220 x 185 cm Frieder Burda Collection, Baden Baden, Germany

Peter Grämer: Yes, I saw Baselitz at the school but he was in an higher semester than I was. During my first and second semester Baselitz was still there. We would sometimes talk with him and we all found Baselitz very good. He was painting these very pointed forms at the time that looked like carrots. Yes, even then we found Baselitz very good. Most of what I know about Baselitz comes from the other students. Baselitz was a cunning fellow. He was always discussing how to become rich and famous. That was his single focus. In 1963 he had his first solo exhibition at Galerie Werner & Katz and he said he wanted to try to create a scandal. So what he did was exhibit a painting that was very shocking for the time. The painting was called "Großer Nacht im Eimer" ["Big Night in a Pail"] . You couldn't see anything clearly but it was basically a painting of a half naked boy masturbating. The public prosecutor closed the exhibition because of that painting and due to this Baselitz became famous.

Art Interview: What was the real reason they closed the exhibition?

Peter Grämer: Because the paintings were considered perverse and they didn't feel the exhibition was fit for the public.

Art Interview: That wouldn't work today.

Peter Grämer: No, today that wouldn't work but back then it was a scandal.

There were the two of them Georg Baselitz and his friend Eugen Schönebeck who painted that hugeportrait of Mao Tse-Tung in 1965. They were both from the DDR and came to West Berlin to finish their studies. They decided together to go in their own direction and use their work to get famous. Schönebeck took the propaganda paintings they were producing in the East for his influence. He painted the eastern iconography with intentional irony here in the West and used that concept to become famous. Schönebeck was actually irritated that fame came so easy to him and as a protest he quit painting and continued his job at the post office. Or at least that's how I heard the story of Schönebeck. But he made some very beautiful paintings.

During my time at the HFBK we didn't have any young professors. Due to World War II our youngest professors were all around 60 or so. We also had the remaining Expressionists. They were around 80 to 85 years old by then. Karl Schmitt-Rottluff was still there. Max Pechstein was also a professor at the school but he died in 1955 before I attended. In addition, we had the students of the Expressionists teaching, such as Max Kaus. When I started there he was around 70 years old.

Art Interview: So you did not learn to paint from life at the school?

Peter Grämer: The school was at one time strongly divided into departments, the mural classes, landscape classes, portrait classes etc. but when I began there everything was combined and equalized. They only offered abstract art or its opposite. Of course, there were still the different professors you could go to.

Picasso played a big role in modern art at the time. Everyone was working a bit in the direction of Picasso and then abstract painting came on very strong. So everyone started painting abstract work.

Peter Grämer "untitled" Oil on canvas 110 x 110 cm

That was the way it was at the time. The professors said to us no more figure drawings, no portrait drawings, drawing from nature is a thing of the past. We have to move forward. That was in 1965 or 1966 and then out of America came the photorealists and the pop artists. Our professors didn't even know about these styles at the time and were still telling us not to do life studies.

I got a job digging at an archeological site in Berlin to make some money. I started there doing simple things like numbering bones. At the grounds every 10 centimeters received a number and each bone was marked with the number from the square where it was found. Later I had to draw the pottery that was unearthed and that was the first time that I learned to draw what I saw. The professor in charge of the dig came along and looked at my drawings. I was drawing a pottery shard at the time and instead of a sharp point I had drawn a round point. He looked at me said "Don't you see that's wrong?". Well I couldn't do it, I just couldn't draw what I was looking at. It was there that I slowly learned how to concentrate on the object and force myself to draw what I saw. So that was my education in life drawing.

Art Interview: Your life drawing was completely autodidactic then?

Peter Grämer: Yes, because the school didn't teach us life drawing. We learned painting techniques. After I was finished with my schooling I worked with the artist Johannes Grützke. Do you know him? His paintings today are very realistic. The thing was that money eventually became an issue for us former students. We were together and none of had any money. We had finished at the HFBK and tried to get exhibitions but the trend was towards the American photorealists and the pop artists and none of us could draw!

The people from the artist group "Großgörschen 35" began painting in the direction of pop art. It was the group with, Peter Sorge, Hans Jürgen Diehl and the others. They were all painting pop art and their paintings were selling. We all said: Man, if they are selling what are we doing? Then it came to us that we could not draw and so we began slowly to transform ourselves and with difficulty began doing completely different work from what we had been doing in art school.

There was another group of the artists that I painted with who where really working in the old Expressionist style which is meant to be inexact. They had a difficult time when photorealism and pop art came. They couldn't just start over because they were so deep into the expressionistic style.

Art Interview: Are you talking about Hans Stein?

Peter Grämer: Hans Stein, Karl Horst Hödicke and others. The funny thing is that a part of these people became professors and their students; Rainer Fetting and his movement, became the famous German Neo-Expressionists, the "Neuen Wilden". So expressionism went underground for a generation. It went from Karl Schmidt-Rottluff to his students who were not as successful with it, but they passed it on to their students, the "Neuen Wilden" who were able to sell quite well.

Art Interview: How did you begin working with galleries?

Peter Grämer "untitled" Oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm

Art Interview: So you started directly with a large established gallery? Did you have any experience showing your work in smaller galleries before going to Springer?

Peter Grämer: No. It is always best when you start with a famous gallery.

Art Interview: Did you ever meet the gallerist Michael Werner?

Peter Grämer: Yes. Springer and Werner trade with each other. Springer liked my paintings. He visted me and he came to my exhibitions. But Werner didn't want to come because he was in Köln by then. Springer had taken me around to the art conventions and I met Werner there. But Michael Werner said that my work was too far away from the current international art market. He said it would be too much work for him to promote my paintings. I changed my gallery after that. The other, smaller galleries were always looking to work with Springer's artists because he was so famous. If you were an artist Springer didn't take special care of it was easy to get into the other galleries. But I was with Springer for a while.

Art Interview: Does the gallerist make the artist famous or does the artist make the gallery famous?

Peter Grämer In his studio November 2004

Peter Grämer: Well, Springer told me when I left that I should search out a young gallerist, but I didn't do it because I didn't have enough money to survive the time it would take for a unestablished gallerist to develop in the market. At the time there were almost no established young gallerists. So, instead I went to Springer's competition "Galerie Schüler". Schüler was at the time the biggest gallery for abstract art but he hadn't broken in to photorealism and pop art. He began showing my paintings and those of my friends because abstract art was on its way out and no one was buying it anymore. After Springer I had shown in a smaller gallery but when I went to Shüller he told me that I couldn't show my work with other galleries if I wanted to work with him. I think that I made a mistake in choosing an older gallerist because he died shortly thereafter. Then it was difficult to find another gallerist.

I sold my paintings privately and the gallery sold my paintings but they were not selling enough. I would work on the side for four weeks at a time doing set paintings in the theater. The theater only contracted us on a show basis, so I would make a bit of money and then be out of work, which was what I wanted anyway because the theater is very stressful. The preparation time in the theater is always too short. You wouldn't think that they were going to make it for opening night but they somehow always do.

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This oral history transcript is the translation of a tape-recorded interview with Peter Grämer on November, 13, 2004. The interview took place in Berlin, Germany, and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine.