Bio

Tiberius Altendorff was born in February 1971 as the son of an actor and a goldsmith during a performance of his father in St. Petersburg. He studied at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, later he broke with the hated artist family and emigrated to Zurich, but from the beginning he felt he had taken a wrong path. His artistic orientation was in his cradle, yet he was little aware of it.

In 1999, he went on a trip to the Mexican desert Baja California. In a raid he was separated from the tour group and broke through only with his clothes on. He experienced fears, hunger, heat and cold until, after a three-day odyssey, he met a local who was looking for gems in the barren land. This a little bit strange man named Pedrolois, was a so-called Nahual . A shamanic medicine man from the southeast of Mexico. He was in search of sulfur minerals and invited Tiberius to share his simple camp with him. These encounter should be fateful for Tiberius and his future destiny. After a intense experience of deprivation, physical hardships, and psychoanalytic experiences, Tiberius had become a new person.

After about 3 months of travels, Tiberius returned to his homeland in the Swiss Alps and began to live his new determination. He quit his job and gave himself into painting.

He studied painting as an autodidact as well as a student of contemporary artists. The streetartist Blu, Graffiti-Artists like Won, Mode2 and Loomit and also conventional painters like Hans Kastler, Hansjörg Wagner, Fred Heinlein, Barbara Leutberger or Maria von Thalberg. He studied the artwork of Michelangelo Buanarotti and Gianbattista Tiepolo but also artists like Frans Hals, Eugene Delacroix, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec or Vincent van Gogh. They all shaped his style, his perception and his technical methods. However, his personal inspiration is unique and lets the viewer dive into a very special world …: into the world of Tiberius Altendorff.