I grew up in Transylvania, Romania. After my studies I worked for 10 years in Romania as a freelance artist. In 1970 I moved to Germany and became a German citizen. 1971-1998 I was professor for fine arts at the University of Design Pforzheim. From 1979 self-taught analog photography in medium and large format. Series on the Westwall and Transylvanian fortified churches and, as a synthesis, various diptych. Installations with the aim of generating a photograph. Collages using own photos and drawings to represent a historical figure such as Samuel v. Brukenthal. (Portrait photo: Sebastian Seibel)
The work with photography is characterized by my imprint as a sculptor. References to sculptural situations from all historical periods are part of my consideration to take a photo. Besides the large series on the Westwall and the Transylvanian fortified churches, I have built a number of landscape, spatial and object-related installations whose main goal was to generate partly autonomous photographs (e.g. the earth windows in Waiblingen and Rockenhausen as well as the two memorial sculptures for Count Schenk v. Stauffenberg). Extremely rarely is a "found photo motif" "taken" by me , in the double sense of the word, and integrated into the overall work. On the subject of Transylvanian fortified churches, I have created and published two volumes of photographs "Bilder einer Reise I" of 2007 and "Bilder einer Reise II" of 2017 and an English edition "Wayfarer through Transylvania II" both 423 pages. The other photo themes are published in various of my exhibition catalogs. Over the past decades, working in the medium of sculpture and photography has roughly balanced each other out. Mutual influences of the two media take place again and again. In contrast to my sculpture, in which, despite the abstract appearance, content is also present, my desire to express myself more broadly, more varied content is best realized in photography, especially in the collage.
In the catalog are presented most of the groups of works of my ouvres in the field of photography and sculpture and commented in detail by three authors. The catalog contains illustrations in black and white and in color. The catalog has 255 pages and is trilingual DE, EN, RO. ISBN 978-606-9044-24-7
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A regionally network of about 250 fortified churches, castles and village churches of unique value can still be found in Transylvania. These are often from the Romanesque time period and most of them are in a precarious state of repair. There have been some inroads in terms of putting proper supervision back into place but the Lutheran church is still reeling from the shock of the mass exodus of its flock. What is missing is management personnel. Nowadays, the remaining 48 pastors provide pastoral care and grapple with the social issues of several rather than just one congregation. This doesn’t leave much time to tend to the castles. This work thus generally falls to those – often old – people who still live in the villages. The question of who will succeed them has not been addressed.
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'When Peter Jacobi arrived in Germany in 1970, he discovered the traces of the war, a traumatic event that incidentally also marked his childhood. Between 1979 and 1983 he archived photographically the heaps of rubble on the outskirts of the cities and the military structures of the anti-tank line (Westwall). He discovered the sculptural nature of man-made wartime architecture. They are anonymous sculptures, memorials of helplessness and defeat that talk about loss and violence. He approaches the artistic credo of the land artists who loved the catastrophic landscape and assumes that such places can create spectacular works of art. These pictures have a commemorative value, which represents a first form of memorial in Jacobi's work.' Magda Predescu im Katalog MNAC, 2021
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Working with an unusual approach: Statements to 'Erdrelief': 'Jacobi cut through the mound by adding a glass wall. Bodies lying in the grass in front of the window are reflected in it and, through the photographing, convey the feeling that they are lying inside. A variant: 'Even in My Sculpture' (1998), in which we see the man stretching his arm through the sediments to her, the woman, voluptuous as a primeval mother. The couple thus lies in a sculpture grave. The man in the installation is Jacobi himself. The 2nd meaning of the work is that of the creator who is sacrificed (in) his own work. This is the only way he can still live after his physical disappearance. The photo album about Transylvania ends with the artist's picture next to an inscription on a grave: 'They rest after their work and their works will follow them'.' Magda Predescu in the MNAC catalogue, 2021 "The artificial intervention brings tension into the natural environment, created by the foreign body. Nature is the actual spectacle and the staging serves its appearance. Windows usually allow a view from the inside to the outside, but here a reversal takes place. It is a frame for the everyday spectacle of nature. Thus, among other things, we "see" the gravitational pull of the earth, in the roots gliding on the sloping glass surfaces, seeking their vertical way down." Isabell Schenk in the flyer of Kunstwochen Baden-Württemberg, 1995 'The colour photographs taken in this earth relief are an independent group of works. In part they show the changing nature behind the glass panes, in part they are posed situations that overlap in their reflection with the relief structure. 1996' Peter Jacobi, 2021
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Love for the human figure: 'The cultural screens show that photography is not a naked record of reality, but a passage through the symbolism afforded by the photographer's gaze. Photography does not register a world, but reconfigures it and adds additional meaning to it. In this series of photos, the signs of art that Jacobi adds to images add a touch of poetic realism. With this series, the artist follows a trend that developed in Germany after the 1950s, namely the use of photography to combat wartime violence, the most prominent representative of which is Gerhard Richter in his atlas. These pictures were produced in the studio in a minimalist set.' Text: Magda Predescu, MNAC-catalogue 2021
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