He lives in Liechtenstein and sold his most expensive work for US$ 1.500.000. Today he returns to Argentina to hold a chair at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Helmut Ditsch, the highest estimated artist from Argentina, is possibly the last representative of Romanticism. His monumental landscapes are the result of his communion with nature. His motto is: “ART IS LOVE’’. As a mountain climber, musician and traveller he lives in the Swiss Alpes, although he declares himself Argentinian. In search of inspiration he travelled around the Andes for 11.000 kilometres last February. Today he is coming to Buenos Aires to hold an opened conference about esthetics, with which he is going to begin his teaching this Monday at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Unsam) near his hometown Villa Ballester, where Ditsch was born and grew up.
Now at the age of 53 he lives in Liechtenstein, where there is spring now. In former years he had resided in a castle in Ireland where he left because he could not overcome the death of Marion, his wife, or “his angel’’: She was his big support for his work. During months he stopped working only for sleeping. The last seven years she was not with him anymore and since then he has not been able to paint big formats. His new destiny is like a postcard from “Heidi’’. “One of my grandmothers was from this region. I hardly knew her because my mother died when I was six years old. Now I reencounter her landscape’’, he explained. From his window he observes snow-covered peaks which have been fascinating him since this time. “On these peaks I found the answers which I had been searching for after the death of my mother. I found the unattainable. Without willing it I started a mystic way through sports, like a way of surpassing myself. The mountain forces you to go through the ledge. The ledge is only for one person. I discovered that life behind the tragedies was beautiful. Although with the death of my wife, this idea got shaken’’, he says.
When doing sports he has an image in his head. “It is the preparation for a new piece’’, he says. When he paints, he feels music, therefore he also plays the piano. When he told his father about his decision to become painter his father answered, “You will never have money, but you will be happy’’. “He lifted the burden to demonstrate him and society financial success from my shoulders’’, he says. Anyway time has demonstrated that one thing does not rule out the other. Since the painting “Das Meer II’’ was sold for US$ 865.000 in 2010, he has been the highest estimated artist in Argentina. Many others of his monumental works got bought. “Yes, I have already exceeded this number’’, he says. Cosmigonon, a painting of the Perito Moreno glacier (7,30 x 2,73 metres), painted 14 years ago, was sold in March for 1.500.000 US$. It was exhibited at the International Book Fair in 2006 and now it is in possession of European art collectors. “I am at a roll and I want to share it with other artists’’, he says.
His analysis of the market is quite ruthless. After years of disagreement and disappointment, he got success outside the system. “There is a big chance for all of us today. Do not wait until you get discovered. You have to go your own way, without passing on your work to other people. You can have a gallerist or a manager, but you have to be the boss and not the other way round. In these days art galleries are perishing. At art fairs the only one who gains money is the one who sells the booths. Only at ART BASEL sales are made through the phenomenon of the “millionaire exhibitionist’’. These people regard art as a speculative thing. They buy a banana with wire for millions because art does not have importance there. Others prefer going privately to the studio and getting to know the artist. The result is a kind of love synergy which consolidates year after year. My collectors have always been younger than me, but we started our relationship when we were 20 and they bought a small painting for US$ 30. We were growing together. Therefore I recommend younger people that they do not take a long view. Your collectors are your allies today, your friends, your neighbors, your people. With every project you start, you always have to take a look at who is on your side first. Knowing where each of my paintings is, makes it easier to get rid of them. So my studio git bigger: It is also Chile, Switzerland, Germany. My home is where my paintings are.’’
At the age of 25 this professional mountain climber, who taught alpinism and painting to children of his neighborhood every Saturday, decided to move to Austria. “It was spontaneous. I have a kind of highly developed intuitive intelligence. I don’t act led by rational decisions. I had never wanted to leave my house and my father. I live in a state of inspiration, I was born as an artist. I did not want to study painting because I had already known it’’, he explains. Anyway he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. “There I learnt that there is an art market which is stronger than we may imagine. There is a dogmatic system led by fashion, according to a small group: the avant-guarde. However there are young people who are going more forward than any institutions. They would never be part of mainstream art.’’
At the Academy he met professors who were heroes of the Viennese Actionism, like Otto Mühl and Hermann Nitsch, who called themselves the “last painters’’ in their manifest. “They broke up with everything. After that there was only place for conceptual art left. Therefore I took a different approach. For me art is love. Speculative art is something inhumane. There is neither love nor beauty. And I wanted to paint for the little guy on Main Street, the common people and look for the essential things for human beings. Which is the nostalgia that is in the hearts of people? There I went. My sea is the sea of everybody. My desert, the desert of everybody. And I see it when people get excited in front of my glaciers and start crying without knowing why. They rediscover themselves in something very deep, which I know I have to search for by opening myself emotionally’’, he explains.
In the eighties doors closes behind him, but he found a window cooperating with architects. “I did not have any chance to participate in painting competitions, where one of the conditions was not to show painting. I am marked by natural esthetics: The reason for the esthetics of the flowers is not to decorate the life of the bees. It fulfills a certain function for the life of the species. In a similar way the mountain does not exist to decorate our life, either. It forces us to be a little bit more than a body of meat and bones. The esthetics is a route of evolution. It invites us to exceed ourselves and the maximum expression of this is art, music, literature.’’
UNSAM announces his visit as international, but Ditsch is national (and popular, he has his own wine brand from Mendoza, El Justicialista). It is not by coincidence that he spoke about former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as an important leader. Therefore the exhibition tour, which he realized in the interior of Argentina (Rosario, Santa Fé, Córdoba and other cities) in the last years, was named nac&pop. Although he drives a Ferrari, he takes his art to slums, convinced that this is a tool of social inclusion. “My painting is not German, it is Argentinian. And I am happy to give something back to my neighborhood, by sharing my art taking this teaching vacancy.’’ He plans a retrospective of 50 works in cooperation with university for 2017.
His style is a kind of realism which is based on experience and action, and not on observation. “I do not just see a mountain and then paint it. I climb it, I live it, I adopt it.’’ Ditch is a superb painter, but he does not enter certain circles because they simply have a different taste. His work would hardly ever be exposed at MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) or arteBA. But - like a good bestseller - he triumphs in public and successfully sells his work. His last big exhibition in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Argentina in 2001 was visited by 100.000 people.
From his chair he thinks to encourage young people and, if possible, share with them a climb. “The importance in art is originality. That is what the world needs. Everybody has their reason to be and a spectator waiting for them. I think it is a cosmic law’’, he says. To explain art, there is nothing better than football. “Did you see the goal of Messi? This is more valuable than any performance at a bienal over the last 30 years. It was perfect. It was more than art. It generated love and beauty and unleashed great passion. This freekick has already entered our culture. And the art: the greater it is, the more popular it is.