Foto Quelle Link: http://www.dobocan.de/de/biographie.html

Vorwort des Koblenzer Oberbürgermeisters zum Katalog des Mainzer Künstlers Dorel Dobocan 2010 in Deutsch und Englisch:

Quelle Link: http://www.koblenz.de/bilder/OB/Reden-GW/vorwort_dobocan.pdf

Mit je Doppelklick bitte Vorwort vergrößern (2-teilig)

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In english: Forward to the Dorel Dobocan Catalog

I first got to know Dorel Dobocan at the Edenkoben artists’ residence in 1991. At the Summer Festival there, we were served drinks by a dark-haired man with a wild beard. I asked the owner of the place who this somewhat foreign-looking man was and what he did for a living. “D.D. is a visual artist from Romania with a studio in Mainz,” I learned. Even then he already was what he is today, “an internationally renowned artist” (Top Magazine Mainz, Summer 2010). Because curiosity is the fuel of the civilized man, it didn’t take long before I, as the new Secretary of Culture, found myself in Dorel’s studio, then still in Fort Malakoff. From the first visit I was impressed with his art and, moreover, by his personality.

From that time on we have realized many projects together in Rheinland-Pfalz, Berlin, Belgium, France, and the USA. We have spent hundreds of hours in friendly conversation and our families have grown close. Over the years I have become one of the biggest collectors of his work, and was able to encourage him in those hard times when he was the victim of almost racist persecution in Mainz. I have also been able to share in his successes, such as important purchases by ZDF for their main studio in Berlin and by the Louvre in Paris.

It is impossible to separate D.D.’s art from the influence of the persecution he experienced under Romania’s Stalinist regime in the 1960s and 70s. His principle work is dominated by an air of freedom and a longing for the sky brought about by living through the darkness of being imprisoned three times. His expressionist, emotional use of color is a scream against the depression of a state and society marked by despotism and the contempt for the individual.

This artist’s history is a striking justification of the importance of the canon of basic human rights and its role as the core element of our liberal democratic order.

Our relationship, a deep friendship, has now lasted for 20 years and survived my change of career and residence, as I went from being the Secretary of Culture in Mainz to the Mayor of Koblenz.

Koblenz is the secret capital of justice in the state of Rheinland-Pfalz. The new Center of Justice will ensure that it will remain so. Justice speaks on behalf of the people. It is the antipode of an inhuman, unjust state.

What is more fitting than to open a Center of Justice with an exhibition by an artist whose experience retells a journey from totalitarian despotism to democratic rule-of-law?

I am delighted about the Center of Justice. I am delighted that its first cultural event will display some of the work by a friend of freedom and philanthropy, Dorel Dobocan.

Good luck to both!

Prof. Dr. Joachim Hofmann-Göttig
Mayor of Koblenz