Günter Rittner

Günter Rittner (born 11 March 1927, in Breslau, Silesia, Germany) is a German painter and illustrator. He ranks among the best known German portrayers of the 20th Century. Rittner's portraits of Ludwig Erhard as well as of Kurt Georg Kiesinger are the foundation of the Gallery of Chancellors, established in 1976 by former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in the Bundeskanzleramt in Berlin.

Günter Rittner, as early as six years old, had already created portraits of his grandparents. In 1939 he painted the injured as well as ordinary soldiers in a military hospital located in the Giant Mountains. In the same year he started attending evening classes in scenery painting at the Breslau School of Fine Arts, where he meet his friend and colleague Hans-Ulrich Buchwald, painter and illustrator.

In 1943, his first self-portrait (oil on canvas) won the 1. Price at a rural contest. His father urged him to become an art-teacher, but that did not suit him at all. In 1944 Rittner received his military-draft and one year later he got in captivity as a prisoner of war, where at first he drew portraits of his fellow prisoners on toilet-paper by use of a borrowed pencil. Later on he painted the onsite security force and finally the camp commander, who from now on provided material and paint. After his release the same year, he financed his further studies in Fine Arts by portraying members of the American occupation force in Germany, hence improving his talent. In 1948 he settled in Munich, his second home, where he attended the Munich Academy of Fine Arts until 1953. His taskmasters were the professors Josef Hillerbrand as well as Walther Teutsch. The immediate impressions of the war time, including human suffering and dying, now came to the surface. His ideals Ernst Barlach and Käthe Kollwitz inspired him in similar ways as did Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec.

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