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(Uli) Hans Ulrich Aschenborn Biography
SHORT CV
(by Dr. Björn von Finckenstein)
See also Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uli_Aschenborn and http://www.bbk-aachen.de/author/hans-ulrich-aschenborn/
Uli Aschenborn was born in 1947 in Johannesburg (South Africa). The doctor was payed with a painting by his father Dieter Aschenborn, a renown animal painter in southern Africa. Uli grew up in an artist's household seeing the paintings of his grandfather Hans Anton Aschenborn on the walls and he learned thus to paint as a child.
„United Art Rating“ (see Wikipedia) rates the three Aschenborns Uli, his father and his grandfather as belonging to the world’s greatest artists of the last three centuries and their art being part of the world art heritage.
In 2018 the French artists assiciation "Ensad Alumni Paris, association des anciens élèves de l'École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs" in Paris took Uli Aschenborn on as an honorary member..
Uli sold his first paintings as a pupil und he exhibited in 1965*) for the first time with great success in Windhoek (Namibia). This exhibition earned him a bursery to study art overseas. To be independend in his art Uli studied from 1968 on civil engineering at the famous RWTH Aachen in Germany, he got his doctors degree with summa com laude, worked for software companies, became a professor in Kaiserslautern and then in Cologne for CAD, computer sciences, maths and structural analysis. In 1988 Uli was between the three top candidates for a post for a graphic design professorship in Hannover (Germany). The musea in Swakopmund and Windhoek as well as the National Art Gallery in Namibia have paintings of Uli.
In Southern Africa the Aschenborn's are mostly known for their animal paintings. Uli paints animals and people in movement. Some of Uli's innovative techniques are named below which the Namibian media branded as "Uli Aschenborn's AMAZING CHANGING ART". These various types of artwork are Kinetic art, since movement is an essential part of them;
| Chameleon-Paintings | If you pass Uli’s Chameleon-Paintings, changes in colour or even in contents can be seen. Sap green trees change their foliage to autumn colours, a bushman (standing for vanishing cultures) disappears to give room to a bicycle (symbol of the new age), sun is setting on one and the same canvas illuminating the sea with colours getting warmer as you pass by ... |
| Sculpture-Morphs | Uli has accomplished the trick to model time into his artworks. His rotating sculptures show in profile the aging of man or the evolution from ‘ape’ to man within seconds. This can be best conceived when looking at the shadows of these statues thrown by a lamp, which are therefore anything but static. He names them Sculpture-Morphs. |
| Turnover-paintings | You can look at Uli’s turnover-paintings from different sides, thereby seeing different contents. Often these paintings are put together like a jigsaw-puzzle – the single peaces themselves often consisting of layered topics. |
| Lucid Objects | Mostly cubes with changing light within. Their coulour is also dependend of the angle of view (their reflection in a mirror differs in colour from the actual cube - which also changes its colour within time). |
| Morph-Cubes | Cubes where the contents changes very much if the onlooker moves - in one cube you make out a fish,a witch, a bird, a snail ... depending from where you look! |
| Living Drawings | Portraits which always follow you with their eyes (they actually turn them to you) - they even look up and down. |
*) Newspaper articles about the exhibition Three Generations Aschenborn in 1965:
• September 22, 1965, Drei Generationen Aschenborn, Allgemeine Zeitung No.181
• 3 Generations of Art, The Windhoek Advertiser
• September 21, 1965, The story behind the Aschenborn exhibition – Family’s art through three generations, The Windhoek Advertiser No. 5732
• September 1965, Exhibition of 3 generations of Aschenborn Art, The Windhoek Advertiser
• September 1965, 3 Aschenborn artists display same sympathy with animals, Observer
• September 1965, Drie geslagte Aschenborn, Die Suidwester
• September 1965, Aschenborn-uitstalling, Liefde vir S.W.A. straal uit kuns
• 1966, The Art of Aschenborn, S.W.A. Annual 1966
• April 1970, Art of the Aschenborns, Panorama (South Africa)
• 1973, Künstler im Haus, S.W.A. Annual 1973
• 1982, Kuntze, Lisa, (translation) The Aschenborns: three generations of painters, published by the S.W.A. scientific society Windhoek