Peter Sylvester

In 1993, he became a member of the Association du Chemin Vert-Atelier Gravure, Paris. In 1994, he participated in the symposium "Natural Science and Art" at the University of Leipzig. He also participated several times in the Gaterslebener Begegnungen, where natural scientists, writers, artists, publicists and politicians comment on philosophical questions from nature and society.

Study trips took him to Dalmatia, Central Asia, Italy and France, among other places. On a trip to France in 1981, he met Victor Vasarely in his country house in Gordes. This was followed in 1983, 1984 and 1985 by working stays as a guest in the Cité internationale des arts Paris and in Aix-en-Provence and Morlans/Mont Ventoux (Provence).

He eventually also incorporated initially artless techniques into his instruments. From 1976 onwards, he used a device based on video technology, the densitron, developed at the Central Institute for Isotope and Radiation Research of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR for the evaluation of scientific images, in order to work on two-dimensional graphics such as aquatint, for example. In the case of two-dimensional originals, the densitron made it possible to introduce colours and to "play" with them experimentally. This was long before image processing by the personal computer. Eventually, he combined several of these techniques and arrived at his particular artistic expression.

Peter Sylvester was awarded the medal of the V International Biennial of Graphic Arts Cracow in 1974. In 1987 he received the Kunstpreis der Stadt Leipzig.

Nature was at the centre of his work. But as early as 1965 he designed his first abstracted landscapes from architectural and landscape motifs. Similarities were also found with the surreal landscape forms of the battered nature of the overburden in the open-cast lignite mines of the southern Leipzig region. But the abstraction went beyond the earthly. In 1968, the first cosmic landscapes. More and more processes of the emergence and decay of fantastic landscapes were included. He himself said about this:

Since 1964 Peter Sylvester had been working as a freelance artist in Leipzig. In 1967 he became a member of the Bundesverband Bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler [de] (BBK) (from 1970 Verband Bildender Künstler der DDR). In 1972, together with other Leipzig artists, he founded the "Leipziger Grafikbörse" as the first jury-free and thus censorship-free artists' association in the former GDR, which held annual graphic exhibitions and is still active today. On the occasion of the 15th exhibition, Peter Sylvester became its director and, after its transformation into an association, was its chairman from 1991 until his death.

The years 1955/56 saw his first attempts at painting, intensified not least by a visit to the studio of the painter Max Ackermann in Stuttgart. In Jena, Sylvester began self-taught studies at the university's Archaeological Institute and attended the Jena Art History Institute as a guest student. His painting education remained autodidactic. In Leipzig, he attended the evening academy of the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig and began his graphic work in its workshops for lithography and etching.

Sykvester was born in Saalfeld. After finishing primary school, he completed a skilled worker apprenticeship as a chemical engineer from 1951 to 1954. From 1954 to 1957, he worked in his profession in Erfurt and Jena and until 1964 also in Leipzig, where he moved in 1958.

Peter Sylvester (3 March 1937 – 4 April 2007) was a German painter and graphic artist.