1901 Gummersbach
1998 Düsseldorf

Bruno Goller was born in Gummersbach on 5 November 1901. Already as an adolescent he began to paint autodidactically before he became the landscape painter Julius Jungheim's pupil in Düsseldorf in 1919. In 1927 he joined the artist group "Das junge Rheinland" and participated for the first time in an exhibition with four paintings. Presumably the very same year he got acquainted with the circle around the legendary "Mutter Ey" and that way also with the contemporary Rhenish avant-garde. In 1928 Goller was one of the co-founders of the "Rheinische Sezession". In 1930 he left the group to take part in exhibitions of the 'Rheingruppe'. At the time of National Socialism, Goller's financial situation worsened , he withdrew due to the increasing political pressure and painted only a few pictures. In 1940 he was drafted to military service in France. His studio in Düsseldorf was destroyed in an air raid in 1943. Except for a paintings, the whole work he kept there was destroyed. When Goller returned from war captivity two years later, he returned to Düsseldorf, where he was appointed professor at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in 1953. In 1958 the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover showed a first retrospective, followed by another one at the Städtische Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf in 1969. Two of his paintings were shown at the documenta II in 1959. In 1965 Goller represented Germany with 35 paintings at the VII Biennale in Sao Paulo. Bruno Goller received several honours, e.g. the 'Großer Preis für Malerei' in North Rhine-Westphalia and the 'Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz des Verdienstordens' of the Federal Republic of Germany. Bruno Goller died in Düsseldorf in 1998. Independent from the artistic current of his time, Goller developed a distinctive image language, in which he strictly stuck to his choice of motifs, which was throughout his life influenced by his mother's hatter's shop. He was interested in the objects of daily use, which were shown in the shop windows like coffee cups, hats and umbrellas. He detached the objects from their context, isolated them, removed any kind of individuality to cause a monumentalisation of these things of daily use.

Goller, Bruno