Tor's Art

Tor's passion for art led him to collect numerous works and to publish books of art criticism, such as his work on the artist James Ensor, a Belgian painter who lived from 1860 to 1949 and who was an important influence on expression and realism after the First World War. Tor was also close friends with Georg Scholz, a German realist painter in the post-war period, whom he met as a patient during the Great War when Scholz was brought to a lazaret in which Tor was working as a doctor.

However, Tor himself was also a passionate sketcher and painter of watercolors, and some of his early work has now been discovered in his estate at the Landesbibliothek Rheinland-Pfalz in Speyer. Tor was never known as an artist, and it is uncertain whether he continued to paint after 1920. The works shown here were executed between 1905 and 1920.

In 1896, the x-ray machine had been invented and x-rays were already being used by doctors in the field. This watercolor by Tor Kiefer from 1920 depicts a person in a lying position (possibly an injured soldier) being shown and trying to hold an x-ray picture of a chest. The heart appears to be damaged in the picture, which might be being held up by a doctor. It is unclear what the machine with a dial at the right of this painting is.

This watercolor is a self-portrait painted in May 1920 and shows Tor working at his desk, writing as usual. Various symbols of items that were important to Tor or that had played significant roles in his life are also depicted: a plane from the war, mountains, his books, a sculpture of the female torso, technology and plants.

In the work we have found, Tor always depicted his own face as a yellow oval without features, also a common feature of art at the time.

This is a work from around 1918 and has been executed in colored crayon. Tor usually used colored crayon when he was at the Front, while most of the watercolors are from the direct post-war period.

In 1906, Tor went on a trip to Italy. It is not yet known with whom he made the trip, as he would only have been 17 years old. Various drawings and sketches have survived from this trip. Tor apparently sketched people he saw sitting in cafés.