The large parking lot, which had served as an open space in my student days for a fashion show and for other exhibitions or FH festivals, was built over, everything looked so different. In the small side street was missing the store, run by an elderly couple, where I bought painting utensils, DinA2 sheets 80 gr for 10 pennies, which we loaded in piles into our folder. That was for the legendary portrait course of Mrs. Zaiser.
By the way, she corresponded to the self-determined type of artist described in the above-mentioned exhibition, eccentric and ingenious, and thus stood out from the teaching staff.
Mrs. Zaiser was the reason why I came to the FH, already retired, she could still give examinations as a former professor. She was the school's insider, and a small crowd of insiders gathered around her. We made pilgrimages to the various classes during the week. Wednesdays on the third floor for nude drawing, or for lack of a model, portrait drawing in the great hall, which had been lavishly remodeled before it started. A large table ribbon wrapped around the model in a U-shape, the drafters rotated to draw the model from a new perspective from each seat. Sessions of 2, 10, and 20 min alternated, with Ms. Zaiser shouting her comments prayerfully around the room. If one belonged to the older classes or to the sweethearts, one got corrections, which were written fahrig in the drawings.
The paper had to be worked through to the wooden base, and makeshiftly pasted back together with a rag, the work continued. Pencil, charcoal, ink, watercolors, but eraser forbidden, always on the thin paper. The process counted and the result took a back seat. In order to be admitted to the portrait course, selected objects such as autumn leaves, onions, mackerel were drawn in pencil studies and later in color studies and trained a very fine way of color perception, of which I am still influenced in my work today. Animal sketches at the zoo, as well as excursions to the circus when it camped in Krefeld at one time, expanded her repertoire of teaching spontaneous, quick movement sketches. Mrs. Zaiser was an institution, she represented a small academy in the Peterstraße.
