Oliver Mark - Günther Uecker, Düsseldorf 2011

Günther Uecker, barefoot, by Lothar Wolleh

Günther Uecker (; born 13 March 1930) is a German sculptor, op artist and

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called ...

ist.

Biography

Uecker was born in Wendorf,

Mecklenburg Mecklenburg (; nds, label= Low German, Mękel(n)borg ) is a historical region in northern Germany comprising the western and larger part of the federal-state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The largest cities of the region are Rostock, Schweri ...

.Biography
at

Deutscher Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Common ...

.de Uecker began his artistic education in 1949 when he took up studies at

Wismar Wismar (; Low German: ''Wismer''), officially the Hanseatic City of Wismar (''Hansestadt Wismar'') is, with around 43,000 inhabitants, the sixth-largest city of the northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and the fourth-largest city ...

. He then went to the art school in Berlin-Weißensee and in 1955 to

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...

, where he studied under

Otto Pankok Otto Pankok (6 June 1893 – 10 October 1966) was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor. Biography Pankok was born in Mülheim on the Ruhr. In 1912 he began his formal training as an artist at the Art Academies in Düsseldorf and Weim ...

at the

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Magdalena Jetelová ...

. In 1956 he began using nails in his art. Uecker met the group ZERO with Heinz Mack and Otto Piene in 1960, artists who propagated a new beginning of art in opposition to the German Informel. He occupied himself with the medium of light, studied optical phenomena, series of structures and the realms of oscillation that actively integrate the viewer and enable him to influence the visual process by kinetic or manual interference. Uecker, Mack and Piene began working together in joint studios at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1962 and installed a 'Salon de Lumière' at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Other 'light salons' followed in Krefeld and in Frankfurt. Since 1966, after the group ZERO dissolved and a last joint exhibition, Uecker increasingly used nails as an artistic means of expression—a material that, until today, stands in the centre of his oeuvre. At the beginning of the 1960s he began hammering nails into pieces of furniture, musical instruments and household objects, and then he began combining nails with the theme of light, creating his series of light nails and kinetic nails and other works. ''a-x Zero Garden'' from 1966, in the collection of the

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single co ...

, demonstrates his use of nails to create the illusion of movement. Light and electricity continued to be one of the main subjects and natural materials such as sand and water were included in his installations, resulting in an interaction of the different elements to create a sensation of light, space, movement and time. Uecker's oeuvre includes painting, object art, installations as well as stage designs and films. His origins explain his interest in the eastern European avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, but he is likewise interested in Asian cultures and their ideas. His works can be seen in collections and large fairs in the West as well as the East. Uecker's artistic creativity reaches a climax in 2000 in the prayer room he designs for the rebuilt Reichstag building in Berlin. Uecker taught from 1974 until 1995 at the

and was promoted to professor in 1976. Halina Jaworski was his first master student (Meisterschülerin). With Otto Piene, Heinz Mack and Mattijs Visser he founded in 2008 the international ZERO foundation. The foundation has the complete ZERO archives from three Düsseldorfer artists as well as documents and photos from other related artists.

Exhibitions

In addition to numerous Gruppo Zero exhibitions, Uecker has participated in many other exhibitions, including documenta 4, Kassel, Germany (1968), the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

(1970), and numerous solos shows, including one at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (1983), a retrospective at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich (1990), and another solo show at the Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany (2010). He had his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Howard Wise Gallery on West 57th Street, showing important work such as the kinetic ''New York Dancer I'' (1966).Günther Uecker: The Early Years, March 9 – April 16, 2011
Mnuchin Gallery, New York. He designed the scenery for Richard Wagner's ''

Lohengrin Lohengrin () is a character in German Arthurian literature. The son of Parzival (Percival), he is a knight of the Holy Grail sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden who can never ask his identity. His story, which first appears in Wolf ...

'' at Bayreuth (1979–82). His first solo show since 1968 took place early 2021 at the Lévy Gorvy gallery in Paris, called ''Lichtbogen,'' where he presented a new set of art inspired by a visit to an island in the Straits of Ormuz. Uecker's work can be found in the collections of major institutions worldwide, among them: the ZERO foundation and Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf; Calderara Foundation Collection, Milan;

Courtauld Institute of Art The Courtauld Institute of Art (), commonly referred to as The Courtauld, is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art and conservation. It is among the most prestigious specialist coll ...

, (London);

, the Schleswig-Holstein Museums (Germany), Studio Esseci (Padua, Italy), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam,

Van Abbemuseum The Van Abbemuseum () is a museum of modern and contemporary art in central Eindhoven, Netherlands, on the east bank of the Dommel River. Established in 1936, the museum is named after its founder, Henri van Abbe, who loved modern art and wante ...

(Eindhoven, Netherlands), Von der Heydt-Museum (Wuppertal, Germany);

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles;

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

, Paris;

Peggy Guggenheim Collection The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is an art museum on the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro ''sestiere'' of Venice, Italy. It is one of the most visited attractions in Venice. The collection is housed in the , an 18th-century palace, which was the home ...

, Venice the

Ulster Museum The Ulster Museum, located in the Botanic Gardens in Belfast, has around 8,000 square metres (90,000 sq. ft.) of public display space, featuring material from the collections of fine art and applied art, archaeology, ethnography, treasure ...

, Belfast; and the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...

, Minnesota.

Art market

Art Basel Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach; Hong Kong and from 2022, Paris. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city's local institutions to help ...

in 2014, art dealer Dominique Lévy sold Uecker's suite of eight white paintings for more than 5 million euros. In a 2017 Christie's Post-War Auction Gunther's Spirale 1/ Spirale 2 sold for an artist auction record of 3.2 million dollars.

Literature

* Beate Reifenscheid and Dorothea van der Koelen; Arte in Movimento – Kunst in Bewegung, Dokumente unserer Zeit XXXXIV; Chorus-Verlag; Mainz 2011; * "ZERO in Europa, Das erste gemeinsame Gespräch mit Piene, Mack und Uecker nach Ende von Zero", von Heinz-Norbert Jocks, in:

Lettre International ''Lettre International'' is the title of a number of cultural magazines published in various languages in Europe. The history of ''Lettre International'' dates back to 1984, the year that the original French edition (''Lettre Internationale'') fir ...

, Berlin, Herbst 2011 * "ZERO, Internationale Künstler Avantgarde", exhibition catalog published by Museum Kunst Palast and Cantz, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Valerie Hilling, Heinz-Norbert Jocks Catherine Millet and Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf/Ostfildern 2006, * "Artempo, Where Time Becomes Art", exhibition catalog published by Musei Civici Veneziani, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Heinz-Norbert Jocks, Massimo Cacciari, Giandomenico Romanelli and Mattijs Visser, MER Paper Kunsthalle Ghent 2007, * Wulf Herzogenrath and Dorothea van der Koelen: Dokumente unserer Zeit XXXIII : Panta Rhei, Chorus – Verlag, Mainz 2005, * "ZERO in NY", exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser, published by the ZERO foundation and Sperone Westwater, New York/Düsseldorf/Ghent 2008, * Britta Julia Dombrowe: ''Redepflicht und Schweigefluss. Zur Gestalt, Bedeutung und Funktion von Günther Ueckers Bibliophilen Werken''. Dissertation, Universität zu Köln, Köln 2006
Volltext
* Günther Uecker, Alexander Tolnay: ''Günther Uecker''.

Hatje Cantz Hatje Cantz Verlag (English: Hatje Cantz Publishing) is a German book publisher specialising in photography, art, architecture and design. It was established in 1945 by Gerd Hatje Buchenwald Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or sus ...

'', hrsg. vom Politischen Club Colonia (PCC) und der Gedenkstätte Buchenwald. Edition Akanthus, Spröda 1999, * ''Günther Uecker. Zwanzig Kapitel''. Mit Beiträgen von Wulf Herzogenrath, Dieter Honisch, Britta Schmitz, Alexander Tolnay, Stephan von Wiese und Kazuhiro Yamamoto. Neuer Berliner Kunstverein/Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, *Heinz-Norbert Jocks: ''Archäologie des Reisens, Ein anderer Blick auf Günther Uecker'', Köln (DuMont), 1997 *'Gunther Uecker – Im Kreis Gehen Ouroboros'; exhibition catalogue published by Har-El Printers & Publishers, Jaffa, 2018 ()

References

External links