Rudolf L. Reiter - Bis unsere Leben wieder eins sind

»I believe that for each painting there is someone for whom exactly it is created. This does not mean that that personwill see such a painting exactly the way I do. However, he will identify hirnself with the painting in his very own way«. Rudolf L. Reiteras a painter has always been trying to provoke a dialogue, and he has always succeeded in finding it. The apparent tranquillity of his landscapes is misleading. They are concealed by a »haze«, their contours are vague, and often it is hard to define the border bet– ween earth and sky. Thus the onlooker is provoked to ask »what actually does he mean?«- because he clearly feels that Reiter's concern goes beyond that satis– faction of optical or aesthetic expectations. Rudolf L. Reiter feels related to the German »romanticists« like Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich (whose tracks he has just been following on the isle of Ruegen), or to William Turner, the English landscapist. Each of these artists is clearly concerned with nature where a human is embedded as an integral part, not as the conductor. Thus a landscape acts as the very personal indicator of a painter's feelings, and will acquire an altogether new quality. Towards the end of the 19th century, having lived through the movements of »enlightenment« and classicism, an artist could find his own naive and innocent way back to nature. He could approach the rational and the emotional and combine it with the unconscions concealed in the human soul, to translate it in his art. The initial situation is much more complicated for Rudolf L. Reiter as a »modern romanticist« in the wider sense of Schlegel's philosophy. The rational has reached its limits, »progress« appears to be a boomerang destroying - maybe unintentionally - the environment entrusted to humans »for a limited time«. The »landscape« meaning the »earth« expresses magical invocations simultane– ously showing concrete matter and abstract ideas, human beings appear as (rigid) figures, lost and left alone with their emotions. It was not by chance that Rudolf L. Reiter has fallen in love with Knut Hamsun's >>Victoria«. He could place this woman with her thwarted love in a landscape that »his soul already had passed through, although physically he had not yet been there«. »Viktoria« is the idea, or perhaps the Utopian idea ofthat other half which only will be able to unite two parts to create something really complete. To »understand« Reiter one should know of his conviction that a soul is immortal, and of his hope that the »spiritual dimension« during this earthly life yet exists and will remain active, and that there is a superiorpower which predetermines your fate. Yet, fear remains. Reiter is haunted by the idea that he might not be able to cope with all the images and visions waiting in his mind to be ex– pressed.