Gold and silver are the most important materials for Gerd Rothmann, who trained as a goldsmith and silversmith at the Hanau Drawing Academy from 1961 to 1964. In his search for artistic development, he was drawn to the works of Hermann Jünger in Munich at the end of the 1960s, where he worked in his workshop. However, in order not to allow his own jewelry to be transfigured, he worked here exclusively on equipment, mostly for churches. Although he never officially studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, he repeatedly attended Jünger's class and was in lively contact with students from all disciplines.
His visit to London in 1971 and his participation in exhibitions at the Electrum Gallery there were also groundbreaking. Rothmann and his fellow artists Fritz Maierhofer and Claus Bury broke with material conventions and used plastics. The results of this period became experimental role models for future generations and fellow artists.
The human body, with all its peculiarities and traces of time, is the focus of his sometimes sculptural works. Since the 1970s, Rothmann has been making impressions of parts of the body (heel, ear, armpit) and integrating casts of fingerprints into vessels, rings, bracelets and necklaces. His works are often individually related to a person or family constellation. In his most recent works, Rothmann places colorful accents on gold and silver. The fine structure of the fingerprints allows the color to last for a long time on the otherwise smooth material.
Rothmann's oeuvre is internationally renowned and is represented in various important museums, such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. One of his most prominent works - the golden nose, which also adorns the title of his first catalog raisonné - is in the Neue Sammlung, Munich.
