Adolf Bierbrauer

Adolf Bierbrauer (26 July 1915 – 2 September 2012) was a German conceptual artist, painter and sculptor.

He was captured in Wroclaw and transported to Transcaucasia (Mingitschaur) to work as a roadbuilder and concrete worker as a Russian prisoner of war.

During his imprisonment, on behalf of the prisoner-of-war camp management Bierbrauer painted documentary images of the geological investigations of the terminal moraines.

His public opposition against electroshock therapy and insulin shock treatments lead to his release from hospital in 1953/1954.

In 1973, he declared himself to be a freelance artist and started teaching painting lessons to children at his home.

At the same time he attended lectures of philosophy at Heinz Rudolf at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.

1998 Bierbrauer moved to the anthroposophically oriented Heinrich-Zschokke Senior house in Düsseldorf-Gerresheim, that he also initiated.

In 2012 Bierbrauer was involved in the exhibition "The Great," at the Museum Kunst Palast Düsseldorf where his hypnosis works were on display.

Bierbrauer's art involved his work as a psychotherapist- using what he saw during hypnosis and narration from his patients, who were overcoming the personal traumas left by war.

His hypnosis paintings were accompanied with Bazon Brock and a performance of Joseph Beuys washing feet.

Bazon Brock wrote in his book "Der Barbar als Kulturheld" (The barbarian as a cultural hero): "The results of these images that emerged then, are ultimately that important because they are artistic formally on the absolute highest level of its time.

Their techniques are comparable also to the works of the abstract expressionism by Jackson Pollock or Jean-Michel Basquiat.

They appear as trash-like sculptures, mostly composed of found material (see also Arte povera), connected with glue, metal wires and tinfoil.