The strange, mystifying iconography of Siegbert Porada
I was happy to find it on exhibition at Berlin's Aid Organization for the Blind
BERLIN (1. May, 2024) — During his lifetime, graphic artist Siegbert Porada (1940-2021) became used to people approaching his framed reliefs with varying responses — “from enthusiasm and benevolent recognition,” as he put it, “to rejection, or merely a perplexed shake of the head.”
Pushed by the changing historical political winds of East/West Europe and informed by his study of Byzantine iconography — along with his labor around the real thing — Porada lived a life of itinerant craftsmanship. His framed-relief portraits were shown in the places where he lived — in Poland, Georgia and Germany — as well as in Vienna. I was happy to have Porada’s work land in my Berlin neighborhood, on exhibition at the Aid Organization for the Blind (Blindenhilfswerk-Berlin).
After graduating high school in Poland and later migrating to Dortmund, West Germany, Porada created iconographic framed-relief portraits, partly inspired by Byzantine icons he’d studied in Tblisi, Georgia. The town of Gogolin was his birthplace, in Upper Selesia (Oberschlesien): a “half farming village…half small-town with a Town Hall, schools, churches and a lime factory, where my father once worked.”
Porada’s mother ran a family business during World War II as “my father was a (German) soldier in that war, serving from the first day to its last….”