Life
Germany, 1938–1961
Dieterich Spahn was born in Cologne on 29 October 1938. During the Second World War his family moved to a farm at Sergen, near Cottbus, and after the war to Düsseldorf. There he studied art and worked alongside artists of his generation, among them Günther Uecker and Jochen Gerz. He made his first experimental glass panels in 1958, and from 1958 to 1960 studied at the Werkkunstschule, where he met the traditions of the Bauhaus and of Johan Thorn Prikker. He then travelled through southern France and Spain to study light in architecture. Watercolors and oil paintings from these years are in private collections in Germany.
Peter Dohmen Studios, St. Paul, 1961–1971
In 1961 the German-born artist Peter Dohmen invited him to work in his studio in St. Paul, Minnesota. There he began working in stained glass, mosaic and murals for churches. Among the studio’s commissions he worked on were the windows and mosaics of the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University in Indiana, for a time the largest stained glass windows in the United States. That commission was Dohmen’s; Spahn worked on it as a member of the studio.
From about 1965 he worked independently in graphic arts. After his mother’s death he spent time in Germany studying the glass of Georg Meistermann and Ludwig Schaffrath, and on his return he painted in oils again. In 1969 he went back to Germany for several months to study Meistermann’s glass closely.
He and the New York artist Mel Geary then bought Peter Dohmen Studios together. The sources give three different years for the purchase — 1969, 1970 and 1971. The partnership produced several large commissions until Geary returned to New York in 1971.
Dieterich Spahn & Associates, 1971–2021
In 1971 he formed Dieterich Spahn & Associates, Inc., devoted to stained glass and mosaic for churches. Through the 1970s and 1980s he worked with George Winterowd and the church architect Edward Sövik on commissions around the country.
In 1980 he married Joanne Shafer. Around the same time he came to know Frank Kacmarcik of St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, a liturgical and architectural consultant. He lectured at St. John’s University on stained glass in the contemporary church, and served on the St. Paul Archdiocesan Worship Board for Arts and Environment until 1986.
From 1988 he set painting aside for more than two years to concentrate on large glass projects, among them the library window for the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. From 2004 he worked with Willet Hauser Architectural Glass of Winona, Minnesota. He kept working until his death.
Painting
He painted for most of his life: watercolors and oils as a student in Germany, oils again in the late 1960s, and from 1977 — after the deaths of his sister and his father — a series of oil paintings that moved away from religious subjects. In the late 1980s he made a series drawn from his children’s drawings.
Seeing the work of Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf in the late 1980s, and taking part in the Wendekreis exhibition there in 1991, changed how he painted. In 1999 he began reconsidering the materials themselves. His last series, from about 2013, took old toys as its subjects — mechanical savings banks, target boards, a 1938 Marx Lone Ranger figure — painted in oil over steel wool on shellac-coated canvas.
2021
He died in Minneapolis on 2 November 2021.
Sources
- “History”, dieterichspahn.com, the studio’s website, written 2012; recovered from the site’s backup of 19 August 2018.
- “Dieterich Spahn” and “Peter Dohmen”, Wikipedia.
- Douglas Flanders & Associates, artist page for Dieterich Spahn.
- Corning Museum of Glass, Rakow Research Library blog, 26 August 2015.