Thomas M. Fritz
Artist
Biography
Born in 1962 in Dillenburg, Thomas Michael Fritz lives for health reasons quite withdrawn on a small mountain in Ewersbach-Dietzhölztal, in the state of Hesse.
T.M. Fritz began painting in 1979. Initially, he made charcoal and pencil drawings, before then from 1985 works in pastel, watercolor and oil, on paper, then later on canvas up to sizes of 2 x 2 meters. T. M. Fritz’s preferred painting style is an expressive oil spatula and brush technique which, after initially very pasty and uneasy color application became increasingly harmonious and compositionally sophisticated.
Thomas Michael Fritz can also be called a political painter, who is both a chronicler of his time and a philanthropist and idealist. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, separating the East from the West, he also believed he had to start anew and destroyed 2000 of his own works by burning them.
Since then he has been painting incessantly, interrupted only by a few hospital stays, in his basement studio on his vision of a better, almost paradisiacal world in which all peoples sit at a richly laid table and lion and antelope bask together in peace.
Thomas M. Fritz’s work is certainly influenced by the concept of Christian charity and a longing for a paradise that is in probably every human being, regardless of his or her particular religion.
In 2002 Thomas M. Fritz began his work phase, which he himself calls “PARADISE STYLE” and which continues to this day. In this style, he creates both his political images, portraits of celebrities (mostly musicians), as well as self-portraits, still lifes and landscapes, as well as his humorous almost anecdotal images for which he is known.
Due to his secluded lifestyle, Thomas Michael Fritz had no contact with the art scene until the end of the 80s. This changed only when the, at that time already seventy-year-old watercolorist Irene Bölling came to the spa in the rural area. This chance acquaintance then led to the friendship with the at the time only twenty-year-old Alexander C. Cornelius, who then organized the 1993 SONDER ART in Cologne, in which Thomas M. Fritz, then still under the artist name JOEY participated.
There were some exhibition participations, as well as smaller solo exhibitions. about current exhibitions will be reported on this page.
