Who: Anna Jill Lüpertz, Gallery Owner and Markus Keibel, Artist…
A visit to artist Thomas Dellert
Who: Thomas Dellert-Dellacroix – Artist
Where: Berlin – Kreuzberg
The Livingroom of Thomas Dellert-Dellacroix in his Loft in Berlin-Kreuzberg
In the 70’s, Andy Warhol decided that Tommy Dollar sounds better than Thomas Dellert. That was the time of the ‘Sex Pistols’ and Dellert was a punk rocker and follower of Warhol. Wether ‘Phantom of the Opera’ or ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’: The multi talent Dellert left out hardly any art- and music genre. Since five years, the native of Stockholm, with compassionate connections to the Swedish royal house, lives in Berlin Kreuzberg. The 120 square meter loft of the former Berlin Wall painter is full of memories and dedicated pictures from Yoko Ono and Michael Jackson to Nina Hagen. One isn’t surprised that the antique Samovar was a present of the Russian tsar family to one of Dellert’s ancestral and that he enjoyed the, meanwhile empty, caviar cans together with the erstwhile Shah of Persia and his wife, Empress Farah Diba.
Multimedia-artist, actor, singer, painter & film maker: Thomas Dellert-Dellacroix
MyStylery: Your life took you to many different cities, Paris, London, New York. Today you live in a former chocolate fabric in Berlin. Does an artist have to be here nowadays?
Thomas Dellert: No, to me, Berlin is only a stopover. I’m restless and in thoughts already somewhere else. Maybe I’ll go back to Paris or Stockholm next.
Highheel on telephone: Artpiece by Thomas Dellert
MS: In your loft you live with your wife and two children. And you also work here…
TD: I never separate work and privacy. My life is my work.
This is what the home of a manic collector looks like
MS: Two times within five years you got robbed. Do the things that stayed with you become a different meaning?
TD: Yes, such as Miles Davis’ trumpet or my collection of stockings from the 30s and 40s. Among is also a pair that Marlene Dietrich gave to me in 1973. Especially the things that can’t be replaced are the important ones. Therefore I saved all my projects on harddrive, which I keep in a hundred years old, very thick steal-safe.
Dellert loves provocation – even and especially in his art
MS: Wherever you look around here, you always find something new. Have you always been a collector?
TD: Yes, a passionate one. My style is creative and full of love. The carpets I designed myself. But I also like Danish design, such as the chair from Kjaerholm.
The black leather chair is by Kjaerholm, the carpets are Dellert-Design
MS: How did you get the idea of wallpapering your bedroom with a leopard print?
TD: (laughs) Since I was 18 I always had a leo-wallpaper. It’s the energy from back then, which I hope for and thereby get back. Now I am 60, three times divorced, survived fires and car accidents. Today I’m standing in the Autumn of life and look back.
Wherever one looks, there is always something new to discover
MS: Kitchen furniture, floor, lampshades, nearly all walls are black here. Why?
TD: I never really thought about this. Black isn’t a color, it’s a powerful basis, a symbol and has something sedative. When I close my eyes, I see black, but also all the other colors. Actually black is the beginning and ending of everything. BvH
Besides Andy Warhol, Dellert is the only artist who ever designed a SL-Edition for Mercedes
Thomas Dellert’s likeness as a bottle label – also an expression of his versatility
Dellert – who was named Tommy Dollar by Andy Warhol – was enthusiastic about pop art and inspired Warhol to his camouflage series
VIP toilet: On the walls pictures, autographs and dedications from Nina Hagen to Michael Jackson
Former Berlin wall painter Dellert, who was born just eight years after the end of WWII, deals in his works with the war theme, the Holocaust and the division of Germany
Thomas Dellert in his bedroom: Here he also keeps treasures of his collection such as the snakeskin-heels of Leni Riefenstahl or a stage outfit of Jimi Hendrix
Dellert’s art is represented among others in ‘The Absolut Vodka’ Collection and ‘The Heinz Collection’ and the Holocaust Memorial Museum
Dellert was already fascinated of leoprints as a jung man. Today his entire bedroom is papered with it
Memories of Africa. Dellert lived in New York, Barcelona, twelve years in Paris, eight years in London, in Barcelona and in Stuttgart
Customized workplace
Dellert has a certain penchant for the morbid
And again Leo: this time not a print, but a real one