Category: humanity

Moa hunters: The scene can be dated around 1300 AD. Moa-species depicted here are Emeus crassus on the left and Anomalopteryx didiformis on the right. There were 9 species of moa on New Zealand. Only 100 years after the arrival of the first humans, which happened at the end of the 13th century, no moas are found in the rubbish pits of their settlements anymore. One of many examples how fast populations of flightless birds endemic to islands collapse after the colonization by humans.

The traditional dog breed of the Maori called Kurī is also extinct, but other than moas they were still seen by the first european settlers in New Zealand. There are still museum specimens of them.

Acrylic and oil paint on panel, 2020

50 x 40 cm

“Scarlet macaw”

At the Musée des Confluences in Lyon where I saw this mask it was explained that bodily adornments identify the group to which the wearer belongs: “Unlike birds which can be distinguished by their plumage, human beings do not bear specific markings of their ethnicity. Consequently the Amerindians choose the feather to distinguish their group’s cultural identity, as for them, it is a symbol of the natural order of things… The choice of feathers used to decorate adornments is one way the Amerindians have of identifying themselves with the bird world. For example, if they use juvenile down or an adult bird’s feathers it will show what age they are and what stage they have reached in their initiation… In Amazonia, the Indians of one group and those of another are perceived as belonging to different species. Tangible representations like ornaments, masks and body painting become extensions of the body, constituting a kind of species-specific costume that group’s members wear over their human forms.”

According to the museum the mask was only made from feathers of the scarlet macaw (Ara macao). It is called “Ype mask” and belongs to the tribe of the Tapirape. Further reading in ethnological literature explained the complex meaning and use in rites, as well as the need to depict the wearer with a red cloth.

Acrylic & oil paint on canvas, 2020

40 x 30 cm

Armor from the first half of the 17th century. It shows the practicable, space-saving mounting at a hook, different from the most manners of exhibition. The sketch originated at the armory in Schwarzburg/Thuringia.

Pencil, 2019

21 x 15 cm

Water bottle, powder flask and rapier from the first half of the 17th century. The sketches originated at the armory in Schwarzburg/Thuringia.

Pencil, 2019

29,5 x 21 cm

Artwork for the clarification of the buildup of divers boxes from north Sulawesi, which are made from several plant materials. Inserted are thin wooden strips, which are connected with fibers and covered with partly dyed leaves. The leaves and fibers originate probably from the palmyra- or doub palm (Borassus flabellifer) and talipot palm(Corypha umbraculifera). The skew in the upper part comes from a slip lid, which is not shown here. The sketch above shows the buildup of the both braided tapes, which are visible on the outside of the boxes as ornament.

The boxes date likely in the 19th century and were probably used to contain betel nuts (called “Sirih” by the locals). As usually, they were from different size to store and transport them interleaved.

Watercolor and ink, 2019

32 x 24 cm

Contribution for the documentary about a restoration of four boxes from north Sulawesi, conducted by Alice Costes in the degree course for conservation and restoration of archaeological, ethnological and handicrafted objects at the National Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart.

Cyprus in the Mesolithic: A man hunts a Cyprus dwarf hippopotamus (Hippopotamus minor). This was a relative to the modern hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius) and characterized by a special foot-anatomy which made it walking on just two toes per foot and was an adaption to a more terresric way of life. This specialized hippo became extinct very fast after the arrival of humans on prehistoric Cyprus.

Acrylic paint on paper, 2019

50 x 40 cm

Medieval mine. In the foreground there is a pitman at the bobbin, on the right tools like shovel, bucket and hoe. Further backward a worker is transporting ore in a hutch. Above there is a pitman on a ladder and someone working with the “Gezähe” (hammer and chisel).

Oil paint on paper, 2018

32 x 24 cm

Client: Landesamt für Archäologie Sachsen (LfA)

Medieval mining settlement. In the foreground there is a mine shaft with bobbin. Workers stamping the ore aside. Farther behind there are a forge, an assay furnace, an ore roasting furnace, the dwellings of the miners, a charcoal pit and a Waldhufendorf. The merchants in the foreground show that these villages were provided with aliment from outside and that they had no own food production.

Oil paint on paper, 2018

32 x 24 cm

Client: Landesamt für Archäologie Sachsen (LfA)

Placer terrain in the Bronze Age. In late autumn tin panning is practiced with timber channels and wooden boxes. Below older mining waste tips are overgrown with vegetation. Left above there are primitive dwellings of the diggers.

Oil paint on paper, 2018

40 x 30 cm

Client: Landesamt für Archäologie Sachsen (LfA)

Published in: Johann Friedrich Tolksdorf: Mittelalterlicher Bergbau und Umwelt im Erzgebirge. Eine interdisziplinäre Untersuchung (Mit Beiträgen von Mathias Bertuch, Christoph Herbig, Heide Hönig, Knut Kaiser, Anja Kaltofen, Petr Kočar, Sonja Matson, Libor Petr, Tobias Scharnweber, Frank Schröder und Matthias Schubert). ArchaeoMontan (4) (Dresden 2018).

St. Bartholomäus and St. Nikolaus church in Ziegenrück, originally from the 13th century.

Ink, 2018

24 x 16 cm

Old wool spinning mill in Ziegenrück. Today it is part of the museum for hydrodynamic power.

Ink, 2018

24 x 16 cm

Medieval keep near Ziegenrück. The building was constructed in the 15th century and is a relict of the former castle of Ziegenrück.

Watercolour, 2018

24 x 16 cm

Renaissance houses in Ziegenrück (Thuringia). The left one shows the date 1546.

Oil paint on paper, 2018

40 x 30 cm

Ötzi

Oil paint on paper, 2018

32 x 24 cm

The picture originated during the symposium “Kunst am Berg”, Panoramarestaurant BergDiamant Fiss/Austria.

The picture shows a male aboriginal Tasmanian, member of an ethnic group which faced a cruel genozide by european settlers during the 19th century. The last of them with pure Tasmanian descent, Fanny Chochrane Smith, died in 1905. Nonetheless there are still people around with partly native Tasmanian ancestry.

The man has dressed his hair with red ochre, which was common at the east coast of the island. The necklace is made from sea snails of the species Phasianotrochus bellulus, which was evidentially used by Tasmanians. Furthermore the tasmanians had very scantily clothing, not exceeding kangaroo fur. They didn’t know the art of tatooing, but scarification was done on parts of the body, like on the chest or shoulders.

For research I used the following publication: Gisela Völger: Die Tasmanier: Versuch einer ethnographisch-historischen Rekonstruktion; Wiesbaden, Steiner,1972

Oil paint on cardboard, 2017

29,5 x 21 cm

Himba woman with child and gourd

Oil paint on cardboard, 2017

42 x 29,5 cm

Pappenheimer, a type of armor named after Gottfried Heinrich zu Pappenheim (1594-1632), a general of the Thirty Years’ War.

Watercolour, 2018

32 x 24 cm

The picture originated at the Dresden Armory.

The chapel St. Anne in Krobitz in the district Saale-Orla was primary a Romanic building from the 12th century and was rebuilt in 1610/11.

Ink, 2018

21 x 15 cm

Reconstruction of the Wysburg, view from southwest

Ink, 2017

59,5 x 42 cm

Client: Weisbach e.V.

Published in: C. Tannhäuser, H. Roßbach: Die Wysburg bei Weisbach im Thüringer Schiefergebirge. Archäologische Denkmale in Thüringen Band 4, 2018

Reconstruction of the Wysburg, view from northeast

Ink, 2017

59,5 x 42 cm

Client: Weisbach e.V.

Published in: C. Tannhäuser, H. Roßbach: Die Wysburg bei Weisbach im Thüringer Schiefergebirge. Archäologische Denkmale in Thüringen Band 4, 2018

Kalmyk yurts, south-western Russia

Acrylic paint on paper, 2017/18

32 x 24 cm

Tōrō, a lantern made of granite which was used in Japanese Buddhist temples first, can be seen also in Japanese gardens since a few centuries..

Pencil, 2018

29,5 x 21 cm

The drawing originated at the Lindenmuseum in Stuttgart.

Stone statue from Hawai’i, 19th century. Such images depicted personal tutelary deities (aumakua), which were venerated even also after the Christianization, mainly by fishermans .

Pencil, 2017

29,5 x 21 cm

The drawing originated at the Lindenmuseum in Stuttgart.

Buddhistical monk

Acrylic paint on paper, 2017

48 x 36 cm

Ancestor skull, drawn in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris

Pencil, 2017

29,5 x 21 cm

Mortar of 1617, drawn in the Dresden City Museum

Pencil, 2017

21 x 15 cm

Sketched apse of the church St. Mathilde in Quedlinburg, a building of the Gothic Revival

Ink, 2017

21 x 15 cm

Sketch of a house in Quedlinburg

Pencil, 2017

21 x 15 cm

The former home of the executioner at the Finstertor in Görlitz (today it is the domicile of a Saxon workcamp) has a solid ground floor made of dressed stone. A timber frame construction in a Franconian style forms the upper floor, where potentially the flat was placed. The executioner of Görlitz moved to this place in 1571, after he residenced within the town, and not outside of the surrounding wall where the depicted house is located. At the house wall showing to the road there is a tablet with the inscription “1666 L. S. B.”, which is pointing to the best known executioner of Görlitz named Lorenz Straßburger. At the lower gable end there is a second tablet with the inscription “Im Jahre Christi A • 1676 | L•S•B” and a drawing of a sword.

Watercolour, 2017

32 x 24 cm

Encounter with Aepyornis maximus

A Madagasy man of the Bara type faces a bird which extinction is caused by his species: elephant birds, also known as vorompatras, belong to the biggest birds of Earth history and lived probably until the 17th century. Anyway this bird has an importance for the natives until today: the shells of the big eggs are collected and sold to tourists. The aborigine has a gusset hairstyle, which was still a distinctive feature between the different clans of Madagascar a hundred years ago. The hair gussets were often covered in a layer of wax.

Coloured pencil, 2016/17

59,5 x 42 cm

MoVo – Moderne Vogelbilder, 2017, Heineanum Halberstadt

The Hausmannsturm is part of the Dresden Castle and today it is over 100 metres high. The bottom has its seeds around 1400, the upper part in its contemporary style was built in 1674-76. As a result of the bombing of Dresden at the end of the Second World War the tower has lost its roof, which was rebuilt only 1991. The small hand of the clock is the minute hand, the big one the hour hand according to the historical example.

Watercolor, 2017

48 x 34 cm

Reconstruction proposal for the Upper Court of the Castle of the Advocates of Plauen in Vogtland, 13th-15th century AD

Pencil, 2015/16

29,5 x 21 cm

Preview for a publication about archaeological excavations and written records of the Castle of the Advocates of Plauen

Stone Age in Vietnam: Hoabinhian or Hòa Bình culture

Coloured pencil, 2016

42 x 29,5 cm

Published in: I. Kraft, J. F. Tolksdorf, Archäologie | Vietnams Altsteinzeit als Bambuszeit?, Spektrum der Wissenschaft, October 2017, 70-77.

Portrait of a young Frenchwoman

Coloured pencil, 2016

29,5 x 21 cm

Slavonian village in the Early Middle Ages

Coloured pencil, 2015

59,5 x 42 cm

Sachsens Geschichte unterm Acker – Landwirte schützen Denkmale, 2015, Sächsischer Landtag www.archaeologie.sachsen.de/5822.htm

Mesolithic shaman with antler frontlet, lynx fur and bodypainting. Headdress like this was found in many parts of Europe. If they were used for cultic functions or drafted for going deerstalking is vague. Certainly there were similar masks by shamans in Siberia till the recent past.

Coloured pencil, 2015

59,5 x 42 cm

Sachsens Geschichte unterm Acker – Landwirte schützen Denkmale, 2015, Sächsischer Landtag www.archaeologie.sachsen.de/5822.htm

Woman of Bronze age, according to a hoard of Kyhna in Saxony (2100 BC), Únětice culture

Coloured pencil, 2015

65 x 50 cm

Sachsens Geschichte unterm Acker – Landwirte schützen Denkmale, 2015, Sächsischer Landtag www.archaeologie.sachsen.de/5822.htm

Collar of the Blackfoot from the middle of the 19th century. It consists of bison leather (Bos bison) and is adorned with claws of the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) and pearls. The collar is arranged in the Karl-May-Museum in Radebeul.

Pencil, 2016

29,5 x 21 cm

Maya warrior

Pencil, 2012

59,5 x 42 cm

Papuan and offensive cassowary (Casuarius casuarius)

Ink, 2014

70 x 50 cm

MoVo – Moderne Vogelbilder, 2015, Heineanum Halberstadt

Schädel_Homo_sapiens_Marcus_Burkhardt

Human skull

Watercolor, 2015

42 x 29,5 cm