1940
Uwe Topper is born in Breslau. After fleeing two times, first to Thuringia and later to the Western zone, he grows up in Northern Germany and finally in Cologne.
1955
Topper joins the Youth Movement, which promotes a culture of travelling. He starts painting, signing whith the acronym uto. He travels as a hitchhiker to Yugoslavia, Greece and finally Istanbul.
1960
After achieving the Baccalaureate in Cologne, Topper hitchhikes over the Balcans to Turkey and later crosses Syria, travelling to Jerusalem, Jordan and finally Egypt. He spends several months in Cairo, where he learns Arabic.
1961
Together with the German photographer Klaus Ruthenberg, Topper crosses on foot the Nubian desert, documenting the rock paintings, that will disappear three years later under the water of the Aswan dam. He visits Khartoum and reaches the Nuba mountains in Sudan.
1962
After a long trip through Iran, mostly on trucks, Topper arrives in Pakistan, travelling through the Beluchistan region. At the Lahore University he studies Islam during a few semesters and offers his first exhibition as a painter in the town hall of Lahore.
1963
Topper lives under the Kalash people in the Hindu Kush, learns their language and documents there rites, traditions and dances. He travels to India and Nepal and then to Ceylan, where he spends time in a Buddhist monastery. Later he travels over Calcutta and Thailand to Malaya and Singapur.
1964
Topper returns to Germany and settles in Berlin, where he works as a bricklayer by day and paints at night in the atelier Totale Kunst in a souterrain flat in the Kreuzberg district. He writes poems and exhibits his paintings in the Leierkasten tavern.
1965
The 25-years-old traveller and artist moves in the artist’s circles in Berlin and makes friends with painters like Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, Artur Raake ‘Märchen’ and Kurt Mühlenhaupt. Here he meets his wife Uta and takes her hitchhiking to Spain and Marokko as a “wedding trip”.
1966
The couple buys a second-hand car Citroen 2CV for 50 Mark and travels over Persia to the Hindu Kush, where they settle down among the Kalash. Topper paints a lot in oil and watercolour. The next year, the authorities force them to leave the region.
1968
Back in Berlin, Topper is again part of the Kreuzberg circle of artists. He produces collages and woodprints and stages several exhibitions. The Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum (FHXB) buys some of his works for the section ‘Künstlerkreis Kreuzberger Boheme’ (Sammlung uto).
1970
Together with his first son, born in Berlin, and with a new second-hand car, Uto & Uta start a journey towards Spain and Morocco, where they spend the next decades. Topper studies the little-known Bronze Age rock paintings of Southern Spain, especially in the province of Cadiz.
1977
The Swiss publisher Walter Verlag publishes Topper’s first book, called Das Erbe der Giganten, about the early history of the Iberian Peninsula. He still spends a summer in Berlin — it will be his last visit to Germany for many years.
1980
Topper stages an exhibition in the local savings bank in Cadiz and participates in the cultural life of the city. During the following years he produces a thorough documentation of the rock paintings of this Spanish province, which still today is considered a reference work.
1986
The book Märchen der Berber, a recopilation of traditional Berber folk tales, a result of many years of ethnographic research by Topper about tradition and language of the Amazigh people in Morocco, is published by Diederichs in the longstanding collection “Märchen der Weltliteratur”.
1988
Three books are published: Wiedergeburt, about the reencanation beliefs of many peoples, Erdbefragung, explaining a traditional Moroccan oracle practice, and Arte Rupestre en la Provincia de Cádiz, a full catalogue of rock paintings in this province.
1989
Topper stages an exhibition in the municipality art gallery of San Roque (Cadiz) and offers several lectures at Spanish universities about Berber culture and language. At his suggestion, Cadiz University creates later an academic course for Berber language.
1990
The Berlin Wall has fallen. Topper remembers a promise made 1977 and returns fo the first time to Berlin. Hitchhiking, as in his youth. And he re-discovers his old love for the city.
1991
Diederichs publishes Topper’s nonfiction work Sufis und Heilige im Maghreb about the Islamic mystic and Moroccan folk beliefs — subjects that have also inspired many drawings and paintings by Topper.
1993
Topper publishes in Munich Das Letzte Buch (The Last Book), an interpretation of St John’s Book of Revelation in the framework of ancient traditions about cosmic catastrophs. The Apokalypse is since many years a frequent motif in Topper’s paintings.
1994
Topper stages agains exhibitions in Berlin, first in the Atelier Künstlerpech of his old friend Artur Märchen and later in the Galerie Urban. By and by, the German capital turns again into his life center and residency.
2000
Since years, Topper researchs History subjects with a focus on the Midlle Ages, Arab astronomical traditions and the creation of the calender systems. During this decade he publishes 6 books about historial subjects.
2011
Topper creates a series of illustrations for the children’s book Der unsichtbare Ring der Hexe Ranunkel by Silvia Adler, working with a technique of colour ink drawings he developed in 1985.
2014
For the first time, the artist writes a novel, called Halb so wild (with the Moroccan Arabic subtitle Schi Bäss ma-ken), a road movie through the whole of Morocco.
2022
Topper lives in Berlin. In Spain, a new edition of his catalogue of rock paintings is published, this time in full colour — a work that is a lasting document of his research.