Siegfried Rischar was born in Aschaffenburg in 1924. Showing an aptitude for art since his early school days, a troubled context forced his talents to remain dormant. During the Second World War, the artist-to-be served in the navy. In spite of the responsibility and stress, he found moments of creativity, illustrating the captain’s diary with drawings, and frequenting the drawing schools in Riga and Gotenhafen (today Gdynia in Poland) as a guest student. In 1948, after much postponing, he enrolled as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Frankfurt, but eventually dropped out as a result of financial struggles. Nevertheless, he channelled his artistic drive as a graphic artist and chief decorator in a department store in his native Aschaffenburg.
Definitive professionalisation came in 1958. From that point onwards, he dedicated himself fully to his craft and made a living from his art. He resumed his self-education in the form of study trips (USA, India, Canada, Alaska, Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia), traces of which manifested themselves in the works created during these respective periods. Stylistically, Rischar’s work is influenced by symbolism and art nouveau, yet evolved into a personal brand of surrealism, drawing from literary or mythological sources. Partly ethereal, most works lean towards nightmarish sequences permeated with a sense of threat and dread.
Towards the latter years of his career, his vernacular and palette brightened and lightened, in spite of the subject matter growing more intimately revealing or politically charged.
A large part of his body of work is occupied by commissions on and in secular and ecclesiastical buildings, facade paintings and wall friezes, which served to secure a livelihood for him in difficult times.
During his career, he was awarded the following distinctions: Culture Prize of the City of Aschaffenburg (2001) and Art Prize of the Lions Clubs from Munich (2008).
Rischar passed away in 2009. After his death, his studio was taken over by his son, the sculptor Otto Gentil.
