THOMAS ROHNACHER
BIOGRAPHY
I was born on March 20, 1957, in Heidelberg, Germany, into a family of artists. My mother, Ilse Rohnacher
is a published writer of poetry, my late father Hans Rohnacher was a painter. My grandparents were
writers, composers and concert pianists. After receiving my B.S. in Biology at the University of Tübingen,
Germany, I moved to San Francisco, where I have lived since 1986, working full time as a painter.
My paintings are included in public and private collections in the United States and Europe.
CREDO
I wish to celebrate painting as an art form and to explore its full potential as a medium of expression and
communication, discovery of beauty, subconscious feelings and elemental truths. I hope to accomplish in
painting that which cannot be achieved through any other medium.
EXHIBITIONS
2001 Freddie Fong Contemporary Art Gallery, San Francisco *
1998 Symphony Hall Westfalen, Rettlinghausen, Germany *; Somar Gallery, San Francisco
1997 Levi Strauss World Headquaters, San Francisco *; Freddie Fong Contemporary Art Gallery,
San Francisco; Kirche zum Heiligen Kreuz, Berlin, Germany *
1996 St. Nikolaikirche, Stralsund, Germany *; Berliner Dom, Berlin, Germany *; Atelier Wieland
Schmiedel, Crivitz, Germany *; Mission Cultural Center, San Francisco
1995 City of Refuge Church, San Francisco *; Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco; San Jose
Cultural Center, San Jose, California
1994 Museum of Modern Art, Bautzen, Germany; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; Ansel Adams
Center, San Francisco
1993 College of Marin Fine Arts Gallery, Kentfield, California
1992 Mladich Gallery, Prague, Czechoslovakia *; Eilert Erfling Gallery, Heidelberg, Germany *
1990 City Hall Rotunda, San Francisco
1988-90 Traveling exhibition at University Museums in Heidelberg, Germany; Cambridge, England;
Montpellier, France; Rehovot, Israel
* Indicates solo exhibitions
PUBLICATIONS
Illustrations and covers for magazines and several books of poetry, record album covers, and posters in
Germany and the United States
Encyclopedia Britannica
SPECIAL PROJECTS
Paintings and Painted Crucifix for City of Refuge Church, San Francisco
Commission of Surrealist Mural for Restaurant Avanti, near Gedächtniskirche Berlin, Germany
EDUCATION
1983 - 86 Hochschule der Künste (Academy of Arts), Berlin
1981 - 83 Academy of Art, San Francisco (Illustration, Drawing and Painting)
1980 - 81 San Francisco State University (Painting and Modern Dance)
1977 - 80 University of Tübingen, Germany (B.S. in Biology)
1977 University of Würzburg, Germany (Chemistry)
1963 - 77 High School and College in Heidelberg, Germany
OTHER VOICES
From the Virtual Collection website of The Estate Project:
“Inspired by the Expressionist painters of his native Germany, Rohnacher uses brilliant colors and
bravura brushstrokes to convey a powerful sense of emotion in paintings that range from narrative,
religion-inspired images to searing portraits of close friends. Rohnacher's paintings are private, in one
sense, because of the raw and charged emotions felt only by the artist. Sadness and loneliness infused
the artist’s earlier paintings as he grappled with a sense of self, which had been affected negatively by
AIDS. His later paintings, however, exude a sense of liberation resulting directly from Rohnacher's long
and difficult search for the spiritual. These paintings represent an acceptance of life, in the face of
illness. For the artist, the paintings evoke the power of healing, especially a healing that evolves through
relationships with others as well as with the spiritual.”
Jim Fischer
Letter of Recommendation for the Guggenheim Fellowship December 1994:
“Thomas is an exceptionally creative, gifted and productive artist. His powerful, large format acrylic on
canvas paintings are not only eloquent testimony of the never ending search for self and God, but also
masterpieces of composition. Thomas' unique style matured over many years of artistic development,
starting with the formal rigor of academic painting and applied visual communication, with flawless, almost
manieristic compositions. Thomas perfected his skills over the years, which reached an initial culmination
in his abstract paintings in the early 1990's. During this same period, Thomas painted masterly portraits
in oil. His portrait of his brother may be one of the best, most compelling contemporary oil paintings. In
parallel with his almost scholarly portrait painting, Thomas developed a unique post-expressionist style of
symbolizing very personal themes and conflicts. His large acrylic canvasses are of extremely dense
expression and at the same time icons of the search for perfection of composition and balance. This is
especially remarkable in large-format acrylics, a technique which does not allow for any post hoc
corrections. I personally consider the post-expressionist associations Thomas' finest pieces of art. They
have an intense, compelling quality to them which is not achieved by any contemporary artist I know.
Most recently, Thomas turned his attention to religious paintings of Christian background. This is a very
unusual and daring move for a contemporary artist, but he fully succeeds at defining and refining a valid
expression of deep religious feelings. Again, the aspect of perpetual search prevails, and at the same
time Thomas' religious paintings are full of evangelical power. Large acrylic canvasses, diptychs and
triptychs coerce the spectator out of his role of neutral perception, they force the onlooker to critical
reflection and to taking a stand. You may or may not like any one of this series of Thomas' paintings;
there is no third alternative, as they are too intense and technically too perfect to not care. Where will
Thomas' artistic development go from here? This is extremely hard to predict given Thomas' vast
creativity. Having known him for many years, I try to collect a few of his pieces, because I am convinced
that Thomas is a great artist who not only has a vital message to convey, but also commands the artistic
means to do this with unsurpassed lucidity and potency. A fellowship of the John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation will enable Thomas to continue to strive for artistic perfection without the current
economic constraints. A fellowship granted to Thomas is money well invested, because the return will be
visual art in a quality and intensity that cannot be measured in dollars. Thomas is not a hobby artist who
produces a few paintings for his edification. His message is serious, joyful, intense and compelling:
searching for truth in our relationship with ourselves and with God. Among the artists and musicians I
know, Thomas is the most talented and worthy of receiving a Guggenheim fellowship. The Committee of
Selection and the Board of Trustees can be assured that he will use the funds to one sole goal - the
creation of isual arts of the finest quality under the freest possible conditions.”
Klaus Ley, MD - Professor at the University of Virginia
Letter of Recommendation for the Guggenheim Fellowship December 1994:
“You asked for a comparative judgment of the two applicants whose work I am evaluating. I shall go
beyond that and compare Thomas Rohnacher to all the people I have ever recommended for any grant
or position. Thomas Rohnacher deserves a Guggenheim, or any other grant or recognition, more than
any other artist I know.
This endorsement will make little sense if one has not seen his recent painting (and I wonder, or doubt,
whether photos and transparencies can substitute: his use of paint, the texture of the pigment, is
somewhat akin to Rodin's approach to the modelé). Without firsthand knowledge of his paintings his
statement may seem that of a naïf or a religious enthusiast. With knowledge of what he has accomplished
in painting, the simplicity of his statement represents the actuality of a great achievement, around which
fluttery elaborations and rhetorical arabesques have no place.
In his statement he speaks of a "new dimension," and I think he has, unlikely as it sounds, ventured
painting into new territory, carrying it over into--and now I do speak rhetorically--a "fourth dimension."
This dimension would correspond to movement within the three dimensions, an emotional fluidity that
occurs within the painting but within the viewer as well, in a way that has few precedents. It would take an
essay and a long one at that, an essay that could connect the psychology of human vision to the
composition of painting, to make it plausible how he has produced this extraordinary effect. His paintings
have nothing of the decorative, and it requires several minutes before each painting in his recent series
in order to see how what first may seem like a slightly representative variation of abstract expressionism
has become, so disturbing and internally moving, an emotion re-envisioning of the New Testament.
These paintings represent a visual breakthrough, and it is with little or no exaggeration that I compare
those canvases to a kindred breakthrough Van Gogh achieved in the 19th century. (One difference is
that Thomas Rohnacher's paintings, ''difficult'' as some may think them, have received already
considerably more recognition than the negligible acknowledgements Van Gogh received in his lifetime.)
Thomas Rohnacher is a true artist in the modern (but not ''postmodern'') sense of one who uses the
idiom of painting to confront the moral problems of existence. He has used paint as the medium in which
to wage the struggles of his life, and the record of his various ''styles'' is simultaneously a record of
difficulties encountered and overcome. Rohnacher is, for example, HIV-positive, and one painting is titled
''I Love My Illness''--an idea that would be scandalous, were that it not literally true that he has been able
to accept everything, partially through painting and certainly in painting. Really, one must go back to Van
Gogh, or the Middle Ages, to find such seriousness of purpose in painting. And yet the finished canvases
do not belong to the past, but to what is visionary in the present, and to what is hopeful for the next
century, when likely people will have an easier time knowing how to look at them.”
Jeffery Paine - author of Father India and Reenchantment