1931-1994 – Peter Ochs was born in East Prussia and fled to Germany with his family in 1945 as a teenager, emigrating to Vancouver in 1952. He later lived in Summerland, BC and Greece, but returned to Vancouver in 1989. He studied painting and sculpting under James Alexander Stirling MacDonald at the Vancouver School of Art, the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris and under sculptor Hans Martin Ruwoldt at the State Academy in Hamburg from 1954-57. He was a founding member of the Sculptors Society of BC.
His work was exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum, the National Gallery of Canada and the Burnaby Art Gallery, as well as numerous exhibitions in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, St. Catherines and Quebec City. His works are in many private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Burnaby Art Gallery and the Surrey Art Gallery.
Essays
Peter Ochs was a sculptor and painter whose mediums were oil, watercolour and ink, as well as wood, iron, cast stone, bronze and concrete. He focused primarily on geometric abstraction but was also interested in representational painting styles and fauvism. In 1956, he received a Canada Council Grant to study traditional Indigenous carving techniques, contribute to the restoration of Indigenous artworks, and create a photographic record of Tsimshian and Haida wood carving masterworks. This experience appears to have had a significant impact on his own wood carving practice, which reflects influences from the totemic art traditions of the Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast.
“I am compulsively creative. The answer lies in my reaction to a world I perceived as overwhelmingly chaotic, hostile and destructive, the world of war-ravaged Germany...creating my own world and my self out of that world was my only defense, my survival method in a world insanely bent on destruction. In this sense, my creativity has a religious significance...my art is my religion.” Quote written for the catalogue of his first solo show at the Burnaby Art Gallery in 1976, part of an article written by Monica Ullman, The Ochs Archive – Peter Paul Ochs, https://www.peterpaulochs.info/life-overview
