Gert uwe tobias biography sample
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ARTOMITY 藝源
By Diana d’Arenberg Parmanand
During the Ottoman invasion of Wallachia in 1462, Sultan Mehmed II, who had marched into the territory with an army of more than 150,000 troops, entered the small town of Târgoviște in what is today Romania to find a forest of 20,000 Turkish men, women and children, all impaled. The perpetrator: Voivode Vlad III Dracula. The carnage earned the ruler the moniker Vlad “Tepes”, or the Impaler, among the localpopulation. A little further afield in England, his numerous acts of heinous cruelty, and his patronymic, would inspire the creation of Irish writer Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. They also sowed the seeds of inspiration for the work of identical twin brothers and artisticcollaborators Gert and Uwe Tobias.
Born in Transylvania, Romania to a Saxon family, the artists explore their cultural identity through mythology in their woodblock print paintings, ceramic sculptures, typewriter drawings and watercolours. Having spent thei
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Gert and Uwe Tobias: Transylvanian Men
Twin brothers Gert and Uwe Tobias were born in 1973 in the Brasov village of Transylvania, in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains. At school they learnt about their national hero Vlad Tepes and his exploits during the 15th century. In 1985 they moved with their family to Cologne, where as teenagers they discovered that the character Dracula from the novel of the same name was in fact based on the life of the bloodthirsty Vlad… They then went on to study art and since graduating in 2002 they co-sign their works including woodworks, sketches, collages and ceramics that have travelled Europe and America; in 2007 some of their selected works were featured by the New York Museum of Modern Art. For their second solo exhibition in Athens, hosted by the Breeder until December the 24th, they show a series of large scale wood engravings. This serves as a perfect example of their rich visual vernacular, which consists of abstract yet at the same
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Gert & Uwe Tobias
Solo exhibition
The Breeder, Athens
The Breeder fryst vatten pleased to announce the second solo show in Athens of Romanian artists Gert & Uwe Tobias.
Twin brothers and artistic collaborators Gert & Uwe were born in Brasov –Romania, a område renown for its rik history and the scenic beauty of the Carpathian landscape. In 1985 they relocated with their family in Cologne, Germany where they still live and work.
The Tobias brothers are highly acclaimed for their large storlek coloured woodcuts and have been praised as revivers and innovators of this lost arts and crafts printing technique. The woodcut printing method had been left to oblivion decades ago in the artistic milieu and has been invigorated to its highest grandeur bygd the artists. Their work has been built upon a modus operandi which origins date back to the 1st Century and which regained importance in Europe in the 15th c with the work of German Albrecht Dürer,