Kurz, Rudolf 1952-

PERSONAL:

Born December 15, 1952, in Germany; son of Wolfgang (a physician) and Theresa (a physician) Kurz; married, 1983; wife's name Catherine (a registered nurse); children: Elizabeth, Oliver. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Attended University of Hamburg, University of Würzburg, and University of Heidelberg; earned M.D., 1978; attended Art Students' League, New York, NY, 1980-81. Politics: "Green."

ADDRESSES:

Home—Orangeville, Ontario, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Artist, illustrator, and writer, 1983—. Exhibitions: Work represented in group and solo shows throughout Ontario, Canada, and at galleries, including Circle Arts Gallery of Tobermory, Painted City, Toronto, Ontario, 1998-2001, Gallery House Sol, Georgetown, 2002-04, and Pentimento Gallery, Toronto, 2007; muralist for hospitals, schools, and others, 1984-2004.

MEMBER:

Ontario Society of Artists.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Gutenberg Complete Book Award, Unisource Litho Awards for Design and Printing, 2004, for Looking for Snails on a Sunday Afternoon; award of excellence, Dufferin Arts Council Art Show, 2007.

WRITINGS:

Mimicry (limited edition picture book), privately produced, 1990.

(Illustrator) Ross Seidel, The Rats Came Back, Annick Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1995.

(And illustrator) Looking for Snails on a Sunday Afternoon (short stories and etchings), Porcupine's Quill (Erin, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

(With daughter, Elizabeth Kurz; and illustrator) An Illustrated Alphabet for the Illiterate, Porcupine's Quill (Erin, Ontario, Canada), 2006.

(Illustrator) A.F. Moritz, Sound of Hungry Animals (poetry and drawings), Rufus Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2007.

Also illustrator of chess books published by Falken Verlag (Niedernhausen, Germany), 1983, 1984.

SIDELIGHTS:

Rudolf Kurz told CA: "Looking for Snails on a Sunday Afternoon is an art book: a collection of thirty-six of my etchings. I was turning fifty, I had lived in Canada for twenty years, and I had produced etchings for ten years: I felt it was time for a book! But I didn't want a normal art book, a glossy affair with curators and hired writers going on about the supposed content of my pictures. (I also was pretty sure that nobody would be interested in doing this for me.) That's why I decided to write the thing by myself, to create a picture book for adults with stories and little surrealist vignettes, something fun but difficult to classify.

"A year later, my publisher asked me to ‘do’ an alphabet book. Again, the pictures came first and the writing came second. This time, I asked my teenaged daughter Elizabeth to share the task with me, and she produced half of the vignettes in An Illustrated Alphabet for the Illiterate. I liked her writing better, and so now I am back where I started: making pictures."