1947
born in Frankenberg / Eder / Germany

1970-1978
Studies at the Staatlichen
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

1992
Galerie Voss, Düsseldorf

1993
Galerie Seippel, Köln

1994
Galerie Voss, Düsseldorf
Große Kunstausstellung NRW, Kunstmuseum Ehrenhof, Düsseldorf

1996
Gallery Voss, Düsseldorf

1997
Art Cologne (Galerie Voss), Köln

1998
Art Brüssel (Galerie Voss), Brüssel
Galerie Edda Andersen, Erlangen
Art International New York, New York

1999
Art Brüssel (Galerie Voss), Brüssel
Galerie Voss, Düsseldorf

2000
Art Brüssel (Galerie Voss), Brüssel
Interval, Witten

2002
Haus Opherdicke, Unna

2004
Arte Fiera Bologna (Galerie Voss), Bologna (I)
Galerie Voss, Düsseldorf

2008
"Das kleine Format", Malkasten Düsseldorf

2009
"Ritter - Cave adsum", Künstlerverein Malkasten, Jacobihaus, Düsseldorf
"Das kleine Format", Malkasten Düsseldorf

2010
"Das kleine Format", Malkasten Düsseldorf

2011
"Das kleine Format", Malkasten Düsseldorf
"Sybille Kroos, Sergio Maina, Frank Sämmer, Ulrike Zilly", Comune di Porto Ceresio, Italien
"Napoleon (...) Düsseldorf", Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf

How Is the King?
Notes on Frank Sämmer´s Drawings
By Marianne Hoffmann

Frank Sämmer´s king sits with eyes closed and head bent forward on soft ground, apparently relaxed but for his left hand, which he stretches upwards defiantly so as, perhaps, to check someone. All this is elaborated on brown cardboard with soft charcoal lines. Only the crown shines golden and gives the bent head royal dignity. Tired is he, the king, who wears a kind of helmet under his crown. A protection from what? Has he possibly just returned from a battle? Too tired to take off the helmet. The folds of the magnificent robe lie accurate and softly draped, the shoes are beautifully made, the face and the hands delicately drawn. The background is outlined only. The concentration on the linear construction of figures and plot makes Sämmer´s large-format drawings different from his opulent paintings. “The main motif”, Gerhard Charles Rump comments on Sämmer´s drawings, “receives a certain over-presence”. This over-presence makes the viewer a voyeur, the more so since the king rests in front of us only too clear, obviously concealing nothing. However, the drawing may well be just part of a planned but not yet composed whole. Sämmer elaborates his figures absolutely in the classical painting tradition to put them in his pictures later.
Apart from the drawing of the tired king, a knight´s sketch attracts the viewer´s attention: a knight in shining armour waiting for his mission. The imagined pictures of the knight and the king might come from the spheres of romanticism and symbolism. The knight character is associated with heroic deeds, he stands for uprightness and courtesy. “Chivalrous” is still a word that will thrill women´s hearts. Even Hollywood has taken hold of the subject to merchandize the ancient knight stories successfully. The sketched figures of the king and the knight are likely to be elaborated later and then reappear with irony and wit in Sämmer´s sometimes politically ambitious paintings or large drawings.
From these works, one learns astonishing things. In a dark forest, Mary Mother of God sits leaning against a small church. A somewhat too big teddy bear stands in front of her; he grins at her in a friendly manner. Mary is taking a rest from child education. Infant Jesus lies happy in front of the church and makes his halo circle around his foot.
Unreal sceneries are the artist´s speciality. More often than not, his pictures are like dream paintings from another time; their reference to “here and now” is completed by small objects from “our” world. Whether toys or bulbs, he boldly works such things into another picture, too. A beautiful young man lies in a glass coffin, “watched over” by different figures. Everybody seems to be asleep. Even in his sleep, a dwarf with his hood pulled down to his face keeps a morose expression. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Yet, why should Snow White not be a handsome young man? And why should not, beside the dwarf, also a ram with marvellous horns and a human body guard him? And why does the young man on the right side of the coffin wear headphones? Does he really sleep or is he absorbed in listening to some music? And why is there a bulb hovering in the air in front of him? Is there something to enlighten him? Or has something already dawned on him? Frank Sämmer´s new works pose question upon question – questions the artist poses but perhaps does not want to answer himself.
To him, the knowledge of abstraction as an historical axiom, reinforced by modern painting, is an important precondition of artistic painting and drawing: art is man´s mythical fusion with the reality he experiences by means of reconstruction, an undescribable act of change.
Perhaps, with his conceptual outline, Sämmer wants to go back to the great tradition of painting and, at the same time, turn forward? Painting has, indeed, had a revival in the big art business for a couple of years. Yet, this flood of paintings, which comes rolling towards us, can only be superficial and leave no memories; the layman will hardly be able to cope with it. The real world is, though, at least becoming the subject of painting again and man once more moves to the centre of art. Is this, perhaps, because more and more one-person households substitute the home community by pictures of people? And, would not Sämmer´s pictures fit in this context most properly since they take us away to some magic world, which is opposed to our everyday life in a pleasant and cheerful manner? But the multilayered contextual and formal references of the drawings and opulent paintings with their deliberate composition and perfection may also cause fear. Perhaps the fear of the sadness of perfection or the fear that we will not be able to see enough of it?
Possibly, with regard to his classical and romantic-modern attitude, Sämmer had predecessors with the German Nazarenes and the Pre-Raphaelites, who they influenced. Both art movements stood out from the academic art that was correct at the time; instead, they with personal feeling made their way into divine nature, back to some noble Middle Ages und towards a new Christian religiousness as well as to ancient myths. After the War, great exhibitions like the one in Frankfurt in 1974 but also the large circulation of collective pictures of yearning printed as posters re-awakened the awareness of symbolist and Pre-Raphaelite art in Germany. Only recently, at the Kunsthalle Schirn, were the Nazarenes acknowleged to be predecessors of modernity.
Is all this due to the increasing tendency in our time to escape into dream worlds or are we searching for a different kind of reality, a reality with non-realistic ground adhesion?
Fascination dominates Sämmer´s picture world, which is furnished with the souvenirs of our childhood. Or else, what is the purpose of a wooden toy train in the middle of the picture? We do not know and keep wondering about what is happening to us when we look at it. Is it an allegory – according to its literal sense -, which is used as a symbol for something else? Allegories demand that the viewer jump from the immediate depiction to the meaning intended. Quite often, the existence of more far-reaching allegorical intentions remains unnoticed in the face of a realistically presented allegory, the direct meaning of which seems sufficiently entertaining or instructive. The allegory is often equated with the symbol though this ought to be avoided. With regard to aesthetics, the symbol is considered more poetical and so preferred to the “cold” thought play of the allegory. In the arts, the allegory appears most frequently; it is even used to personify a country or nation and to illustrate abstract and conceptual facts. For instance, there is death personified as a skeleton (the flesh will perish) with a scythe (it will hit everybody). Yet, what do the toy train, the electric bulb and the headset stand for? And, will the meaning remain more open in a drawing than in a painting or will coloured figures be easier to interpret?
In 20th centruy art, the drawing was often less appreciated than the painting, particularly in the commercial art business after 1945. Artistic practice, however, has been able to liberate the drawing from the normative demands of academic aesthetics. Artists like Cézanne started to question the line as the basic principle of drawing. It is no longer linear depiction and a reduced use of colour that define the drawing. The various art movements at the beginning of the 20th century took up this approach so that the theoretical boundary between drawing and painting became more and more blurred. Currently, aesthetic theorists deplore the absence of a theory of drawing.
Considering Frank Sämmer´s drawings, though, one will understand that the drawing does not need any theory. His works are unique due to their high aesthetics, a brilliant control of the drawing pencil no matter what material, an uncontested technique, an unerring eye for details, a large knowledge of contents and forms of old and new art and a knowledge of our current life.

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