Professional Career
Born 1959 in Speyer, Germany
Training as a photographer,
afterwards studies in book design and illustration.
Photographer, painter, illustrator, designer, author, publisher and producer.
Over 50 book publications and numerous documentaries to date.
Exhibitions at home and abroad, including Switzerland, France, Austria, Italy, Canada and Holland.
Member of the BBK Rhineland-Palatinate and the German Journalists' Association.
Artistic approach
The pictures by Franz-Josef Bettag reveal themselves to the viewer as scenery. We look through the frame into the "Theatrum mundi", the world theatre of everyday life as the artist sees it. In front of us artfully linked figures act, which are playing their roles silently and have a lot to say to us from the screen.
We are trapped, become from the spectator to the eager voyeur or to the player and opponent in this world theatre. Bettag's exaggerated play of figures, the palpation of painterly possibilities to the point of the grotesque, falls artistically out of the scope of the usual and therefore has an almost magical attraction to the viewer, who can hardly resist a statement, whether positive or negative. What he experiences with all the theatrical magic, the costumes, the staffages and in the stage light, are also his often buried feelings: longing, love, hatred, fear...
"Human interaction" - shaped by individual and at the same time social determination - this is the central concern - around which the artist's creative imagination revolves. So he sees with alert eyes also the loneliness of the people in our affluent society, the finiteness of their existence, their role play in dealing with each other.
their fear of violence and destruction. The artist is aware of the effect of his paintings, which he experiences each time he opens an exhibition. The viewer feels that the artist is moved by more than his own state of mind; he is a moralist in the depths of his soul.
Recent exhibitions
1991 Zwischenwelten (Pfälzer Phantasten) in Speyer
1992 Realismus am Oberrhein in Straßburg
1994 Davos in der Schweiz
1994 Zwischen Traum und Wirklichkeit anlässlich Kultursommer Rheinland-Pfalz in Speyer
1998 Theatrum Mundi in der Universitätsbiblothek in Kaiserslautern
2002 BBK Sonderausstellung in Erfurth
2004 Salon du réalisme in Paris
2009 Phantastic in Rotterdam
2012 und 2013 art imaginär – Sammlung Westermann in Neustadt
2014 Pittura Fantastica – Einzelpavilion in Mailand
2018 11 vom Rhein zu Gast im Stift St. Florian/Linz in Österreich
2018 Kabinett Westermann - KUNST IN DER FRUCHTHALLE in Rastatt
2018 Nitram Museum in Kanada/Ontario
