Edgar Ende: The painter of mind worlds

Come and meet Michael Ende’s father and his art! The webpage www.edgarende.de invites you to discover these mysterious images. To find his images, Edgar Ende used to withdraw into a dark room where he waited until his consciousness lost control over his thinking and he fell into a condition that seemed free of intentions. The images that appeared before his inner eye he would quickly sketch onto a small sketchpad. To get the light he needed into his darkness, he used sticky tape to fasten a small torchlight onto his drawing pen.

Such a “catch of images” could bring forward extremely different results: Sometimes he came back with dozens of sketches, sometimes with only a few. From time to time it happened that no image would turn up at all.
If a sketch did not lose its mystery, even after long observation, then and only then would Edgar Ende transfer the motive into a drawing, later into a gouache, and at last – as the crown, so to say – into an oil painting.

Indeed, there are very different ways to reach Phantásia. Which pictures by Edgar Ende do you like? We would be happy to hear from you.