Early Life and Artistic Training
Uwe Poth was born in Kiel, Germany, in 1946. His early years were shaped by a focused period of study during the mid-1960s. Between 1965 and 1968, he spent his time at the Drawing Academy in Hanau and the Werkkunstschule in Offenbach. These years provided a foundation in the technical aspects of drawing and applied arts before he moved toward more complex academic environments.
His training continued in Hamburg, where he spent several years immersed in different disciplines. From 1968 to 1975, he studied at both the Hochschule für Gestaltung and the Hochschule für Bildende Künste. This period of study was not limited to the visual arts alone; he also attended Hamburg University, where he focused on sociology, art, and education. This combination of technical training and sociological study helped form the way he observes and interprets the world around him.
Professional Career and Teaching
Since 1979, Uwe Poth has been based in the Netherlands, finding a home and a workspace in Nijmegen. His presence in the region is marked by a long-standing commitment to the local art community and the academic structures that support it. He has spent much of his professional life within the walls of the Artez Academy for Art and Design AKI, where he held a professorship from 1985 to 2006. His influence extended beyond the classroom through his involvement in the organizational side of art education; he was a founding member of the Association of Independent Art and Design Schools for the AKI Enschede.
His teaching and professional reach have often crossed borders. In 1994, he traveled to China to serve as a guest professor at The Academy of Fine Arts in Xi’an. This period of international exchange reflects a career that moves between the specificities of a local studio and a broader, global perspective on art and design. His work is not confined to a single location, yet his roots remain firmly planted in the Dutch landscape where he has lived and worked for decades.
Technique and Artistic Style
Uwe Poth works through a layering of different media, moving between installations, drawings, paintings, mixed media, woodcut, and acryl. His process often begins with a sensitive response to a specific situation or place. He might look at the textures of a building or the specific colors found in a landscape and use those materials to inform the surface of a work. This approach results in a stratification where different fragments of imagery come together. While the combination of these pieces can seem puzzling at first, they form a cohesive visual language once the imagery settles into the composition.
His paintings often carry the weight of history and memory. He incorporates portraits, mythological references, and city images of Nijmegen, such as the Stevenskerk, into his compositions. These elements interact with a reflection on European history and ideas, creating works that feel like they are traveling through time as much as through space. The resulting images are often dense with stories from the past, layered in a way that suggests a search for truth through accumulated detail.
- HORTUS D-wheel of fortune, mixed media on paper
- Mixed paint on paper- ´a, 1996
- Crayon on paper, 1983-84
- Woodcut on different photos, 2020/21
- Acryl on paper-1minute paintings
Exhibitions and Key Works
His work has traveled far beyond the borders of the Netherlands, finding space in galleries and cities such as Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Amsterdam, Alexandria, and Egypt. In 2018, he held a solo exhibition titled "LAND IN SIGHT" at Museum Het Valkhof, which ran from February 3 to May 31. This show brought together layers of imagery, including portraits and city views of Nijmegen, from St Peter’s to the Stevenskerk, often reflecting on the concept of travel through both time and geography.
The scale of his output varies significantly. He has produced large-scale mixed media on paper titled HORTUS D-wheel of fortune, measuring 400 x 500cm. Other significant pieces include a 400x150cm work from 1996 titled mixed paint on paper- ´a, and a crayon work on paper from 1983-84 that measures 100 x 70 cm. He also works with more intimate formats, such as his 32cm x 24cm acryl on paper-1minute paintings- á, and woodcut works on different photos from 2020/21 that measure 40x 30 cm.
