Peter Anders, 1958

Peter Anders was born in Nördlingen, Germany, and teaches at the Department of Art and Design at the University of Kassel, where he received his training. He lives and works in Berlin. Anders makes drawings of charcoal and ink; sculptures of wax, wood, and ceramic; and installations out of all of these as well as found objects.

In the way he builds his paintings, Anders draws attention to three-dimensionality and spatial depth. He frequently decorates the works with oils and waxes in a manner reminiscent of nineteenth-century oil painting, which begins with lighter colors and continues with darker layers. Anders focuses on both subjective and collective memory. His "Room Paintings" series, which he has been working on for several years, takes inspiration from events encountered in newspapers and newsfeeds. His intent is to portray burning mosques, houses attacked by neo-Nazis, and looted museums before the destruction is lost in the annals of history. He visualizes the consequences of carnage and damage.

"Collateral" refers to a tragic event that took place in Cairo in 2004 as Anders saw it in a newspaper photograph. The painting depicts one of the galleries in Egypt’s Museum of Islamic Art, which sustained considerable damage from a car bomb attack targeting Cairo police headquarters on the other side of the street. He memorializes the attack, which damaged and destroyed important artifacts from the museum collection in the way he saw it in a newspaper photograph.