No more princes
Until 2022 the artist continued to develop the theme of the elector princes of Saxony with more or less frequency but his parallel work of a marked new abstractionism was increasingly gaining ground in the artist's pictorial and sculptural work.
Paintings
In the process of von Wilhelm's artistic production we can observe three different chronological stages that coincide perfectly with three different spaces, and in each of them the artist is living situations and challenges of life completely antagonistic to each other.
This evolution that alters the course of the artist's life will be clearly evidenced in the development of his work, imprinting it with a documentary and sometimes autobiographical character that becomes evident when one delves into the keys that the artist uses strategically at each moment.
The Venezuelan period 1994 - 2014
The Munich period 2014 - 2017
The First Dresden period 2017 to 2022
The Second Dresden Period 2022 ...
The prince electors
Title in the German catalog: Die Kurfürsten von Sachsen.
2018
Oil on gilded wooden board
60 x 40
The reading of the prince elector / Die Lesung des Kurfürsten.
2018
Oil on Canvas
150 x 120
The chess match/ Das Schachspiel
2019
Oil on wood
5/ 90 x 55
The romance between the prince regent and his minister / Die Romanze des Prinzregenten und seines Ministers.
2018
Oil on gold lacquered boards
2/ 120 x 68
The pleasures of the crown prince / Die Vergnügungen des Kronprinzen.
2019
Oil on wood
30x26
Angelina and the 7 princes.
Title in the German catalog: Estebans Petition an Angelina vor den Kurfürsten
2020
Oil on canvas
210 x 210
The painting Angelina and the 7 prince electors of the year 2020 becomes a fundamental work in the artistic production of Von Wilhelm. As the protagonist and central figure of the painting is portrayed the artist's great-aunt and protector Angelina Dubuc de Firnhaber. She is the only character that looks directly at the viewer outside of the painting. The artist has portrayed himself and although his figure occupies the exact central point of the canvas, his attention is focused on her, to whom he has given the leading role. The scene in which they meet is not an imaginary composition by the artist. On the contrary, in this work the artist faithfully reproduces the recurring evenings that he and Angelina had with friends in the " petit versailles" where they lived together for 18 years. in Maracaibo. Only something has changed, the prince-electors of the Wettin royal house of Saxony have taken the place of their friends, all belonging to the decadent upper class of Venezuelan society, consumed by communism, with whom the artist lived until his last years in Venezuela.
It is precisely this anecdotal or autobiographical argument that gives an exceptional character to the artist's work, and it is from this painting that the guidelines of understanding can be established that allow us to enter the psychological universe of the artist's painting.
Hans Struberger 2022
The Prussians at the Feast of the Saxon Court.
Title in the German catalog: Die Preußen auf dem sächsischen Hoffest.
2020
Oil on canvas
300 x 220
The blue man.
Title in the German catalog: Im Garten von Dr. Ditsch.
2020
Oil on canvas
150 x 75
At the English court.
Title in the German catalog: Der Kurfürst im Gewand der englischen Königin.
2021
Oil on canvas
120 x 80
Worldly pleasures in the king's bedroom.
Title in the German catalog: Die weltlichen Vergnügungen des Hofes
2020
Oil on canvas
Triptych 240 x 80
Worldly pleasures in the king's bedroom II.
Title in the German catalog: Hoflinge.
2020
Oil on canvas
5 panels of 90 x 55
Another evening with the guests / Mit den Gästen
2019
Oil on Canvas
200 x 180
With the Russian imperial family.
Title in the German catalog: Familienporträt in meinem Dresdner Schlafzimmer
2020
Oil on canvas
220x220
Courtiers
Title in the German catalog: Die verdorbenen Höflinge.
2020
Oil on wood
6 / 110 x 80
The series of paintings produced since 2020 under the title of "Courtiers" shows us the artist's interest in abstractionism, even though figuration is still clearly present, and the theme that characterizes the artist's production in Dresden remains, this pictorial style called by the German journalist Harald Daßler "Abstract Baroque" marks a turning point in the artistic production of Von Wilhelm, which will be observed in the paintings produced in the following years.
At the feast of the Prussians
2021
Oil on canvas
300x220
The Torgau paintings.
Title in the German catalog: Die Torgauer Hochzeiten.
(Gemälde 1: Der Hochzeitszug von Kurfürst Johann Friedrich I. und Sibylle von Jülich-Kleve-Berg in Torgau).
2019
Oil on canvas
600 x 220
The Torgau paintings, originally called "The Torgau weddings", in German: "Die Torgauer Hochzeiten", are a series of large-format paintings that recreate the weddings of the Saxon prince-electors, celebrated in the city of Torgau at the time of the reform and the counter-reformation.
Von Wilhelm reconstructs, from documentary sources, the impressions of the events and the characters that took part in them. The artist uses his extraordinary oil painting to give validity to historical events that have ceased to be, for a long time, interesting for a contemporary artist.
Von Wilhelm forces us to look back at the past while still standing in the present.
The fragment of the painting shown below belongs to the wedding of Prince Elector Johann Friedrich I of Saxony with Sibylle von Jülich-Kleve-Berg in 1526. This is however only one of the two paintings that make up the 6 meter long composition.
Of equal characteristic is the other painting that shows the wedding of the Elector Prince Johann Georg I of Saxony and Magdalena Sibylle of Prussia.
Von Wilhelm's interest in painting the daily events that surrounded the religious reform and counter-reformation in Germany is not due to the capricious choice of a theme. The artist uses his training as a historian to reveal codes and show historical elements of everyday life that are rarely or not spread at all, and that according to the artist are essential to experience the historical fact.
Along with Torgau's paintings, the artist has also developed the theme of Luther and Catherine von Bora, breaking myths and orthodox criteria about the couple of reformers of the Western world.
Edwin Chacón Ferrer
Kunsthistoriker
Excerpt from the text for the exhibition catalog 2021 at the castle of Albrechtsburg Meißen
The Banished Elector
2019
Oil on canvas
200 x 140
Courtiers in love
2018
Oil on Canvas
120 x 120
The halos of saints in Von Wilhelm's pictorial universe
Byzantine iconography remains a hallmark of Von Wilhelm's work, no matter whether he is painting figures from the old German nobility, politicians or characters from his everyday life, his great-aunt Angelina or his self-portrait.
The use of this resource as a means of expression in his painting clearly has a connection to his experiences in the family environment in Venezuela.
Already at the age of 18, he witnessed the sale of a rich collection of 18th-century Orthodox icons and Spanish Colonial religious art from the collection of his great-aunt Firnhaber. The sale, which was due to reasons purely related to the economic situation in Venezuela at the time, greatly depressed the great-aunt, for which the artist decided to recreate the missing icons on some old boards that had belonged to the old Maracaibo seminary and using gold in powder that the same great aunt had used years ago in her time as an active artist.
All this mishmash of events are clearly observable in a forceful way in the work of von Wilhelm.
O Soto. 2020