Gerlach Gottfried Bommersheim (30 April 1934 † 20 December 2006) was a German artist, jazz musician and pioneer of psychoanalytic art therapy in Germany.
Gerlach Gottfried Bommersheim (30 April 1934 † 20 December 2006) was a German artist, jazz musician and pioneer of psychoanalytic art therapy in Germany.
Gerlach Bommersheim was a son of Paul and Elly Bommersheim. [1] Bommersheim's artistic career began with his studies at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts with Charles Crodel and Rolf Cavael (1956 to 1960). Parallel to his studies, Bommersheim played as a vibraphonist and pianist in various modern jazz formations. Initially, he played commercial jazz with musicians such as Gottfried Luber and Heinz Schellerer in army clubs and jazz clubs. In the mid-1960s, he worked with Don Cherry and was involved in his film music for the film Zero in the Universe by George Moorse (1966). He also worked on the soundtracks to films by Vlado Kristl. After the first state examination, he worked as an art teacher in schools until 1969 and later as a lecturer and head of specialist teachers for art education. From 1970 to 1973 he underwent a second degree (pedagogy, psychology, philosophy and art history) as well as additional training in group dynamics at the Society for Analytical Group Dynamics (teaching analysis with Wolfgang Schmidbauer). From 1976 he learned Tai Chi (Taijiquan) from the teacher Toyo Kobayashi and later gave lessons in it himself.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Gerlach Bommersheim came into contact with artists from the group SPUR and the artists' community Kollektiv Herzogstraße. Through their socio-critical thinking and acting, these artists contributed a great deal to making Munich a venue for an artistic spirit of optimism and establishing a connection to international modernism. In the confrontation with these artists, Bommersheim found inspiration for his own work. "For me, drawing and painting is an eternal alchemical process in dealing with one's own and marterial resistances. Exciting adventure in which it is usually impossible to predict what will happen. The events are the result of consonances and dissonances between me and the material, two parallel odysseys of getting to know each other. This is and remains a practical process, irreplaceable by linear thinking. I am forced to stage surprises, become the director of chance, the lucky guy in finding and the artistic director of the unknown." – Gerlach Bommersheim, 90s. The creative process was in the foreground at Bommersheim and was more important than the finished result. If you look at his paintings up close, it becomes clear that reworking and painting over them was part of his creative process.
In the 1970s, Gerlach Bommersheim accompanied American guest musicians such as Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson as a jazz musician. In the early 1980s, he founded his own quartet, which had a nationwide impact in the 1990s. He also played in formations of the Swiss drummer G. Pechet-Reber (Wald in Town, CD).
Bommersheim is considered one of the pioneers of art therapy in Germany. In 1974 he founded a center for art therapy and creativity promotion. He had a teaching position at the Academy for Curative Education and was co-founder of the Working Group for Psychoanalytic Art Therapy (APAKT) in 1984.
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