Dietrich Blodau
Born in 1937 in Recklinghausen, Dietrich Blodau grew up in Germany but left his native country in 1970 to settle in Ireland where he still lives now. To mark his eightieth birthday, this retrospective of his work is to honour not only his artistic achievements but also the contribution he made over four decades to the development of the arts in Ireland.
Blodau first studied graphic design at the Werkkunstschule in Dortmund [1959–1963] and then continued in Fine Art at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste [1963–1967]. After graduation he was recruited to set up a new department in printmaking at the Limerick School of Art – at that time with a cohort of less than 50 students, where printmaking was unknown. Blodau’s achievement for the higher art education has been in his determination and ingenuity in sourcing and improvising presses for etching, lithography and silkscreen workshops which were eventually to rival those he knew in Dortmund and Berlin. Equally, Blodau endeavoured to raise the educational level in printmaking to that of the German Diplom, so that by the 1980s students were on a par with their international collegues.
Blodau was not content only to revolutionise the School of Art – together with colleagues and students, he raised the cultural profile of Ireland as it developed, setting up the EVA – Exhibition of the Visual Arts – originally for Limerick artists and now an international event. Berlin’s “Graphotek” gave Blodau the idea to set up a similar art lending system at the library of the Mary Immaculate College in Limerick.
Alongside his ongoing commitment to education and cultural growth in Ireland, Blodau continued to develop his own art. The exhibition offers a full range of his highly expressive observational works in print and other media. His work has been exhibited in numerous venues and collected, amongst others by the Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick University Collection, The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Berlin City Collection and the Havana City Collection.
Blodau has maintained a close relationship with his native Germany and has enabled hundreds of students and artists to internationalise their work. He spends time there each year working mainly at the Berlin Druckwerkstatt in Kreuzberg, where most of the lithographs in the exhibition were produced. In 1996 Blodau organised an exhibition of Limerick artists which was shown in Havana, Cuba and the Acud Gallery in Berlin. Blodau was instrumental in organising an exchange of work between Limerick printmakers and the Bethanian Druckwerkstatt resulting in an exhibition of Limerick printmakers in Bethanian in 2012 and a return exhibition of Bethanian printmakers in Limerick in 2013.