Biography of Carl W. Röhrig

Key milestones of my life

My Biography

Milestones

2026

Art Calendar for the 40th Anniversary

Carl-W. Röhrig’s calendar has been published for 40 years now.

2026

Forest of Fantasy

With personal comments on my artistic work and a beautiful selection of detailed views of my paintings.

2022

Swiss Citizenship

On 20 September 2022, Carl-W. Röhrig was naturalized in Switzerland.

2017

MERCI – THANK YOU

The book MERCI/Thank You, featuring 100 works and quotations by famous personalities, is published.

2014

2014 sees the release of the DVD “The Narrative Image”

Publisher: Swiss Internet Television, Medioline.TV
The DVD shows the complete creation of a painting while the artist simultaneously talks about his work and his experiences throughout his many years of artistic activity.

2014

Landscape Painting – Landscape Fantasies

Röhrig, as a painter of Fantastic Naturalism, has always been involved, to a greater or lesser extent, with landscape painting. As the world sinks ever deeper into digitalization, Röhrig decided to breathe new life into the tradition of landscape painting, with the clear intention of bringing joy to people in the ever-growing cities of the future through his landscape fantasies. “Floating trees”, whose surfaces become landscapes, are the central motif of these works.

2011

Book Publication

“Soul Food” by Caroline Frizzi, featuring 19 works by Carl-W. Röhrig. With the painting “Terra chielo”.

2010

Fantastic Worlds

A book about the tarot by Roe & Kirsten Buchholzer is published, based on the Röhrig Tarot and its 78 motifs.

2008

Move to Switzerland

Carl-W. Röhrig had already decided in his youth that he would one day move to Switzerland. In 2007, the time had finally come: after a longer stay and the warm invitations of many Swiss friends, this wish could be put into practice.
Since then, the artist has lived and worked near Zurich in the canton of Aargau, in an area not unlike his original Upper Bavarian homeland.

2008

Visions Come True

The book “Visions Come True”, featuring works by the painter and quotations by famous personalities, is published. It is a book that tells how all reality first began with fantasies and visions. A truly thought-provoking book.

2006

Murals

Röhrig’s work is highly valued for its meticulous and richly detailed painting style.
In order to work on a larger scale, the master finally decided to pick up a larger brush and deliberately leave the “frame” of a painting behind. As a result, the first murals were created. A mural project comprising 16 motifs was created in Hamburg in a popular city-centre restaurant called “La Prego”. Painting in public spaces is something that continues to fascinate Röhrig. In 2011, he was able to complete his extensive work in the restaurant “Le Cèdre” in Zurich. He transformed the bare walls into oriental sandstone architecture. Indeed, visitors feel transported into another world. Since then, many more paintings have been created.
“When a wall becomes a window into another world, then I am happy” — this is how Röhrig once described it.

2004

Good Luck and Success

The book “Good Luck and Success”, featuring works by the artist and quotations by famous personalities, is published. A short time later, it was sold out!

2002

White Series

These works were created around the year 2002. These acrylic paintings on white cardboard are therefore known as the “White Series”.
Thematically, this series of paintings, similar to the “Brown Series” of 1986, deals with the problems of the mind and its lack of freedom.

2000

The Future Never Ends

Röhrig’s dream of creating a major book about his work from 1971 to 1999 could be realized. This illustrated volume is a total work of art in itself and also bears the subtitle “Fantastic Naturalism”.
Its chapters were almost entirely commented on by the artist himself. This special art book, with its 900 illustrations, 300 of them full-page, is unique in its timelessness and continues to inspire young and old alike.

1999

His Own Visual Language

Through the challenge he faced while working on cover illustrations for German-language magazines, his own visual language emerged in the mid-1980s. This phase, still the most extensive period of his painting to date, was brought together under the term Fantastic Naturalism. It was his own interest in themes relating to the destruction of nature and the environment that gave rise to this series, which was documented in a book bearing the same title. Ultimately, Carl-W. Röhrig’s paintings were also essentially about inspiring people to preserve and appreciate the beauty of nature and the Earth.

1997

Award from the Art Directors Club

In 1997, Carl-W. Röhrig received an award from the Art Directors Club in Germany for the cover image of the magazine Der Spiegel, “World of Agents”.
Cover page of the magazine Der Spiegel Spezial, 1997.

1996

His Independent Artistic Work

From then on, Röhrig devoted himself almost exclusively to his independent painting.
By that time, around 2,000 works had already been created.
In the years that followed, the painter created another 1,000 paintings.
Almost all of these works found owners all over the world, from Iceland to New Zealand and from the USA to Germany!

1996

Museum of Forest and Environment in Ebersberg

The Museum of Forest and Environment in Ebersberg, Bavaria, acquires five illustrations by the artist.

1996

Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg

The Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg acquires five paintings.

1991

Röhrig Tarot

Within two years, the artist created the complete body of work comprising 78 paintings.
In the years that followed, it became a legend. The newly developed visual language across the 78 themes of the Röhrig Tarot sparked great international enthusiasm within the tarot scene.
The publisher “Blue Star Communications” in the USA and Aquamarin Verlag in Europe ensured its worldwide distribution. The RÖHRIG TAROT became a classic!

1990

Book Publication

In 1990, the book CARL-W-RÖHRIG was published.

1989

Photorealistic Paintings of Endangered Animals

Inspired by a commission to create illustrations for a book entitled “The Garden of Eden Must Not Die”, Röhrig went on to create many portrait paintings of endangered animals in the following years.

He called this series “Ancestral Gallery of Endangered Animals”.

Together with wildlife researcher and filmmaker Heinz Sielmann, the works were presented for the first time in Bonn. The German Parliamentary Society honoured his art with an exhibition in its premises. The animal portrait “Snow Leopard” from 1992 was specially awarded by Ringier Verlag as the best illustration. Countless publications of this series of images made some of the paintings very well known.

Under the patronage of the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature), many exhibitions featuring these works followed.

1987

Television

First film portrait of the painter on German television, NDR: A Fantastic Journey Through Time.

1986

Brown Series

With this series of paintings, Röhrig addressed, among other things, the theme of the mind and the mental imprisonment of human beings for the first time. The series was given this name because the works were created almost entirely in shades of brown.

A legendary exhibition entitled “Imagine…” at the Berlin Wall showed works from this sequence of images featuring breaches in walls, which in a certain sense anticipated the events of 1989.

1986

NDR Film for Germany’s First Television Channel

Evolution as a Work of Art or the Fantastic Journey Through Time
This film told the story of the artist’s diverse creative work as an illustrator for Stern, Der Spiegel and GEO, as a scientific illustrator, and as a successful independent painter with his imaginative, surreal-looking paintings.

1983

Editorial Illustrations for Stern, Der Spiegel and GEO

He contributed to a medical-scientific film for GEO magazine entitled War in the Body, directed by Volker Arzt. The film was broadcast on Germany’s First Television Channel (ARD). This was followed by a study trip lasting several months to the USA and further work on medical illustrations for the book The Incredible Machine for the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. The work, originally written in English, was published in German as the GEO magazine Der Mensch. He created hundreds of further publications of artistic illustrations and paintings for various clients, as well as cover images for the magazines GEO, Der Spiegel and Stern.

1980

Move from Munich to Hamburg

1977 - 1985

Scientific Illustrations

At the beginning of his career as a scientific illustrator, Röhrig made a name for himself with the book Ars Bacteriologica, created in collaboration with Bayer AG. For this, he received an honour in 1981 from the Minister of the Interior of the Federal Republic of Germany for outstanding scientific illustrations. Further awards and honours followed in the USA, including from the Museum of Scientific Illustration in New York. Röhrig has been a member of the National Geographic Society, based in Washington, D.C., since 1989.

Honour for outstanding scientific illustrations from the Minister of the Interior of the Federal Republic of Germany.

1971 - 1973

Education

Training at the Academy of Graphic Arts.

Röhrig taught himself his painting skills. The applied art of illustration gave him the tools to develop, in his independent painting, a visual language that can be understood and “read” by many. Röhrig never saw it as his task to work experimentally or even scientifically.
Röhrig has always seen his task as using his images to encourage viewers to form associations and reflections within their own world — to inspire them!