Ekkeland Götze
Ekkeland Götze (born August 14, 1948) is a German painter, printmaker and conceptual artist. Life Götze was born in Dresden on August 14, 1948. After a training as a screen printer he educated himself as an industrial engineer through a correspondence course. He was not allowed to study painting since he was lacking the "Abitur" educational achievement, but Gerhard Kettner, president of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, provided him with a teaching assignment for screen printing anyway. Götze painted in his spare time, but he was not allowed to exhibit because of regulations in East Germany - formally he was a printmaker, not a painter. Because of these restrictions he filed an application for an exit permit 1985 which was granted in 1988. He immediately moved from Dresden to Munich, West Germany, where he opened up a printshop for artists. He is also co-owner of a garment company. Works In 1989 Götze started to work on a project called "Erde" ("Earth"). He collects soil samples at extraordinary sites of human history around the world and applies them to paper, lime mortar or other backgrounds, making use of a standardized, self-developed technique he calls "terragraphy": He grinds the soil, mixes