Moritz Thoma, 28, became involved in art at an early age. As a student, he portrayed his teachers and classmates during school hours. He did it so well that the teachers, not entirely unselfishly, confiscated his works. Moritz now earns his money through painting and exhibits. His former teachers may still have an early Thoma.
At first, Moritz painted in his apartment, where he handled acids in the kitchen, with a mask on his face and with the window open – even in winter. The solvent in the oil paint gave him a headache. Even today, Moritz still gets sick when the smell of turpentine hits his nose. That’s why he rents a studio. “It’s high time,” as he says. “Otherwise I would have painted myself sick in my apartment.”
Moritz works in the old master style. His techniques vary, as do the materials. Stone, copper and wax plates serve as painting surfaces. He mixes his colors himself and mixes the pigments on a plate. In numerous studies, Moritz experiments with different primers. “The work on a painting begins long before I put the first brush stroke.”
In his studio at Ostbahnhof, Moritz spends a lot of time looking at his pictures. He is based on the old masters, but he doesn’t copy them. He also always paints his figurative depictions freely. “It’s important that everything goes through my filter. Otherwise I’m just a human printer. That would completely remove your own perception.”
Moritz gets the motifs for his characters on the street. He approaches people and asks if they will model for him. In photographs he captures bodies, very often his own. He tries to capture the dynamics with thick brush strokes. Only then does Moritz move into nuances: “From the rough to the fine.” This is how he builds up several layers.
During his process, Moritz uncovers deeper layers of the paintings to find abstraction. “First comes the construction, then the destruction,” he says. Moritz still needs figures and bodies in his pictures. “But abstract painting is where I want to go at some point. That’s the purest form,” he says. And his big goal.