HELMUT BUSCH
Worpswede and its landscapes
A painter from Worpswede
You will find here a selection of works compiled from the estate of the painter Helmut Busch,
who left several hundred watercolor and acrylic works.
About the "moor painter" Helmut Busch
Freely after Goethe, the artist Helmut Busch wanted to “give duration to the moment” with his works.
The richness of mood, the secret poetry, the external barrenness and the inner richness of the Low German landscape fascinated him. His watercolors, acrylic paintings, etchings and poems thus also tell of the beauty of bad weather, silence and intimacy. His motifs are “simple and unsought”.
He loved simplicity because, in his words, the beauty is not in the effect. His watercolor painting seeks the dissolution of line and color. Veils, fog, delicate diction, gray tones and subdued light suggest Rembrandt as a teacher; but now and then colors shine out of the limited palette by means of their own substance.
Friedrich Netzel (Kunsthalle Worpswede) was enthusiastic about Busch’s work and emphasized already in 1965 “In your watercolors you are unrivaled”.
With his unique stroke and the special view Busch created so almost timeless, silent snapshots of the landscape around Worpswede and the Teufelsmoor.
The blessed, happy friendship with the Worpswede painter Benny Huys, the old farmhouse in the Teufelsmoor Fährmannshuus 55 on the way to Bargschütt, which Busch used since 1966 as a studio and 2nd residence and the decades-long exhibition of his works in the Worpswede Kunsthalle, document the artistic, spatial and also human proximity to Worpswede and the famous Worpswede giants of his time.
During his lifetime, Helmut Busch had the focus, in contrast to his colleagues, not so much on the own person and exhibition of his works, but he was particularly the art education, as well as the art creation itself at heart. His motifs lack any figurativeness. The landscape, the nature and the water thus also ships, were his painterly closely encompassed topics. Many of his works are now privately owned in northern Germany.
The gallery contains a selection of watercolors, acrylic works and excerpts from autobiographical notes and poems of the years 1941 – 1978, compiled from the estate in 2016.
Delia Nordhaus
(free artist and gallerist)
"When I first saw the paintings and watercolors of Helmut Busch, I was immediately captivated by the special expressiveness of his works.
He worked with quick brushstrokes, confident and very expressive, with only a few noticeable pastos. Busch did not need that as a means of expression and that makes his mastery.
Like many of his Worpswede artist friends, he was completely captivated by the wild and rugged beauty of the Teufelsmoor landscape. What is striking is that Busch painted only in very few of his works, flowering or spring-like landscapes. However, his works radiate an intensity that I have so rarely experienced in my more than 30 years of practice as a painting restorer.
He effortlessly joins the succession of great painters of his time.
Masterful, the washed backgrounds, on which he put his landscapes. He was tremendously confident in his brushwork.
I hope that Busch will finally receive the attention and consideration he deserves."
Sabine Ulrich, Painting restorer