H.D. Tylle
JAMES AUER
LABOR AND ART are Married in German Painter’s Brush
H.D. Tylle is a man with a dual mission: to dignify labor and put a human face on mass-produced products. His principal tool is the paint brush; his dominant muse is modern technology.
Tylle specializes in the relatively ignored field of industrial art. Along the way, he has captured scenes in workplaces that few artists - or members of the general public, for that matter - have visited. He has immortalized factory scenes and individual laborers, and underscored the importance of America’s shrinking industrial base. And he’s enjoyed every painful, dangerous, gut-wrenching moment of it.“In my art,” Tylle said, “I am attempting to reach two levels: people who are involved in art but don’t know about working circumstances, and people working in factories who are normally not involved in art.” In the course of his long career, Tylle said, he has sought to follow the example of Vincent Van Gogh by actually going where the workers are to depict them. [...]
Tylle specializes in the relatively ignored field of industrial art. Along the way, he has captured scenes in workplaces that few artists - or members of the general public, for that matter - have visited. He has immortalized factory scenes and individual laborers, and underscored the importance of America’s shrinking industrial base. And he’s enjoyed every painful, dangerous, gut-wrenching moment of it.“In my art,” Tylle said, “I am attempting to reach two levels: people who are involved in art but don’t know about working circumstances, and people working in factories who are normally not involved in art.” In the course of his long career, Tylle said, he has sought to follow the example of Vincent Van Gogh by actually going where the workers are to depict them. [...]
JAMES AUER, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 26, 2004
Grohmann Museum
Grohmann Museum
Milwaukee, WI USA
Milwaukee, WI USA
The museum is named in honor of Dr. Eckhart Grohmann, an MSOE Regent, Milwaukee businessman and avid art collector, who donated this collection to MSOE in 2001 and subsequently the funds to purchase, renovate and operate the museum that bears his name. [...] The Man at Work Collection now comprises about 700 paintings (40 oilpaintings by H.D. Tylle) and sculptures that span more than 400 years of history (c. 1580 earliest-2007 latest). They reflect a variety of artistic styles and subjects that document the evolution of organized work, from manpower and horsepower to water, steam and electrical power.
The earlier paintings depict the early forms of work, such as men and women working on the farm or at home. Later images show trades people engaged in their work, such as the blacksmith, chemist, cobbler, cork maker, glass blower and taxidermist. The most recent works are images of machines and men embodying the paradoxes of industrialism of the mid-18th century to post- World War II. These works are exterior views of steel mills and foundries surrounded by hefty trains and tracks or dark factory interiors where glowing molten metal is juxtaposed with factory workers and managers. Most of the paintings are by German and Dutch artists, although others include American, Austrian, Belgian, Bohemian, Danish, Dutch, English, Hungarian, Flemish, French and Spanish.
© 2007, The Grohmann Museum at Milwaukee School of Engineering
The earlier paintings depict the early forms of work, such as men and women working on the farm or at home. Later images show trades people engaged in their work, such as the blacksmith, chemist, cobbler, cork maker, glass blower and taxidermist. The most recent works are images of machines and men embodying the paradoxes of industrialism of the mid-18th century to post- World War II. These works are exterior views of steel mills and foundries surrounded by hefty trains and tracks or dark factory interiors where glowing molten metal is juxtaposed with factory workers and managers. Most of the paintings are by German and Dutch artists, although others include American, Austrian, Belgian, Bohemian, Danish, Dutch, English, Hungarian, Flemish, French and Spanish.
© 2007, The Grohmann Museum at Milwaukee School of Engineering
The atrium's ceiling features a 700-square-foot circular mural, The Great Minds of History, by H. D Tylle. 
In March 2006, MSOE commissioned H.D. Tylle to create eight stained-glass windows (measuring 88 x 64 inches) for the dome of the new Grohmann Museum. The themes and subjects for the works were selected from the Man at Work Collection. The windows depict workers at a river valley iron smelter and the construction of the Tower of Babel as well as men and women in the roles of rolling miller, hay harvester, blacksmith, carpenter, cooper and quarryman. When creating a stained-glass window, making an accurate template of the window opening and determining the strength of glass and lead are the starting points. H.D. Tylle developed a compositional grid for all the windows, selected details from the original paintings and created his own artworks in which he employed coloration appropriate for the medium of stained glass. First, he completed eight ink and watercolor sketches of the proposed compositions. These sketches were created because they come closest to capturing the effect of stained glass. The next challenge was developing a drawing that could serve as the basis for a stained glass design. Tylle completed these drawings in the original size in his studio in Kassel, Germany.
The windows were produced by the “Mayerische Hofkunstanstalt” in Munich. There the drawings were silk-screen printed on the glass and colored by the glasspainter Marcela Großhauser in close collaboration with the artist. The glass is then framed in lead, soldered into place and made weather-tight using a soft, oily cement called mastic.
© 2007, The Grohmann Museum at Milwaukee School of Engineering
The Museum has a magnificent mosaic in its glass entryway. 
Inspired by Marten van Valckenborch’s (Flemish, 1535-1612) Fantastic River Landscape with Ironworks, 1609, H.D. Tylle created a very bright and light-flooded landscape painting to adorn a wall on the roof of the Grohmann Museum. Valckenborch’s painting is one of the oldest in the Man at Work Collection. The scenery Tylle painted in the mural reflects elements of the original painting but he used his own artistic interpretation using ideas from French Impressionism. Tylle also painted two bronze sculptures in a trompe-l’oeil foreground to make the viewer walk into the painting..
© 2007, The Grohmann Museum at Milwaukee School of Engineering
H.D. TYLLE | Pf. 1230 | D-34227 FULDATAL | GERMANY