Künstler - - Stift Admont

Peter Meyer
*Bütgenbach 1871 or 1872–1930, Eickelborn Clinic
Pseudonym from Prinzhorn: “Peter Moog”
Born into poverty, Meyer was able to use his nimble spirit and art of living to free
himself from his circumstances.
His eloquence soon made him a beloved “original”. The trained waiter opened a
restaurant in Münster and married, but his wife died after seven years. Only one
of three children survived. He was not able to keep the restaurant going, but
found a position as the managing director of a hotel in Cologne in 1907.
After feeling a sudden “electrical shock in the brain”, he began to see himself as
an artist. At the same time, he threatened his family with a revolver in “great
agitation”, causing him to be admitted to the Düren Clinic (1909-1911) and
Eickelborn Clinic (1911-1930).
The “Prince of Poets” began to draw in 1912. He became a “holy painter” when
he vowed in 1918 to live as chaste as a monk and renounce alcohol as well as
tobacco. He voluntarily gave away his paintings, yet hope that he could use them
to pay for his sins.
Meyer painted for the Cologne Cathedral: Madonnas and large biblical themes,
such as the deposition from the cross, the last judgment as well as – outside of
painterly conventions – the prophet Elias.
The surfaces, garments and backgrounds generally oscillate between bright red,
crystalline fragment field of colours and lavish tapestries. The biblical figures with
round faces, however, disavow all corporeality, as though Meyer is using his
gaunt figures to fulfil his own body-rejecting vow.
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