"And when I am sometimes asked how long I have worked on a painting, I say: half a century and so many hours, because the entire time that one is granted belongs to it, the whole life. The most important step is not quickly done, the tiny step from reality to truth."
Otto Niemeyer- Holstein (translation of direct quotation)
Play of lights and colours
Lüttenort – in five decades, during his walks on the beach, in the garden, and in the studio, graphics, oil paintings, and watercolours of unique beauty have been created here, unmistakable in their signature.
Still life: tufts of grass and reeds in the wind, stones by the sea, touched by vibrant light, a post in the beach landscape in light colours, groins with bizarre ice caps. Or paintings depicting the clash of natural forces, ice barriers. He especially loved the winter beach, his "great lover."
Just as the atmosphere in Lüttenort is harmonious and without any haste, so are Niemeyer-Holstein's paintings. Continuously inspired by nature, he seeks his motives in his immediate environment, often in insignificant details – flowers, a tree, driftwood – in the everyday life of nature, he discovers its richness. His landscapes and still lives have soul – both in the large and the small scale – and this experience he passes on to us. The winter moods on the Baltic Sea are powerful and mighty; in contrast the majority of still lives are delicate, sensitive, and simple. In his last years, ONH has increasingly focused on portraiture and nude painting. He paints the people he knows well, the inhabitants of the island, and himself. The personality of the model is subordinated to a general statement about the beauty and harmony of the human body.
Never falling into routine, in tireless creative power, the artist always presents himself to us anew, always young, and with his work, he gives us "a summer day of art." – Grzimek (translation of direct quotation)
"Meeting Niemeyer-Holstein is meeting him in his landscape, in his light, and his colours; it is a meeting in his artistic experience and creation – and then the own delightful experience of the meaning of his colours. It is the island of Usedom between the sea and the Achterwasser. And right at its narrowest point, where you believe you only need to stretch out your arms to touch both the sea and Achterwasser at the same time."
Prof. Max Burghardt (translation of direct quotation)
