Christiaan Tonnis (born June 5, 1956, Saarbrücken, Germany) is a German symbolist/realist painter, draftsman, video artist and published author. He studied at the HfG Offenbach with Dieter Lincke and Herbert Heckmann(de), and is currently residing in Frankfurt, Germany.
Tonnis’ works are "supported with psychological knowledge" His earliest drawings reflect his interest in psychoanalysis and psychopathology such as, catatonic rigidity or the post...
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Christiaan Tonnis (born June 5, 1956, Saarbrücken, Germany) is a German symbolist/realist painter, draftsman, video artist and published author. He studied at the HfG Offenbach with Dieter Lincke and Herbert Heckmann(de), and is currently residing in Frankfurt, Germany.
Tonnis’ works are "supported with psychological knowledge" His earliest drawings reflect his interest in psychoanalysis and psychopathology such as, catatonic rigidity or the postnatal psychosis depicted in his 1980–85 collection. To "show the psychic as a second face" he "uses stitchings, masks and fragments of masks—they are sometimes barely visible"
In 1986, he started to paint landscapes from literature like the "Magic Mountain (after Thomas Mann)" and portraits of writers and philosophers. E.g. "he stylizes the philosopher Wittgenstein to a sketchy Icon of a soulless prominence. An almost gruesome picture, expressive in its amply color scheme of white, grey and black, almost like a mold of a Hippocratic face"...
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