Burkhard Held is German painter living and working in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. His art is based on figuration dissolving into

abstraction Abstraction is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from the use and classifying of specific examples, literal (reality, real or Abstract and concrete, concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" ...

Biography

Held was born in 1953. He studied at the

Berlin University of the Arts The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK; also known in English as the Berlin University of the Arts), situated in Berlin, Germany, is the second largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research uni ...

as a "Meisterschüler" (Master Disciple) of Dietmar Lemcke from 1972 to 1979, and was granted a scholarship at

Garrucha Garrucha is a municipality of Almería province, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Garrucha is a seaport of south-eastern Spain on the Mediterranean Sea and the right bank of the river Antas. In 1998 the town had a population of 500 ...

(Spain) by the "German National Academic Foundation" (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes). In 1993 he became professor at the

. and later served as a professor at the

China Academy of Art The China Academy of Art (CAA; ) is a provincial public college of fine arts in Hangzhou. Zhejiang, China. It is affiliated with the Province of Zhejiang. The academy is part of the Double First-Class Construction The World First-Class Un ...

("Chinesisch-deutsche Kunstakademie") in

Hangzhou Hangzhou, , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ; formerly romanized as Hangchow is a sub-provincial city in East China and the capital of Zhejiang province. With a population of 13 million, the municipality comprises ten districts, two counti ...

, PRC. Held is responsible for the organization of the cooperation of the

and China.

Work

Burkhard Held is a figurative painter, who dissolves his motifs –

landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

portraits A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better re ...

flowers Flowers, also known as blooms and blossoms, are the reproductive structures of flowering plants ( angiosperms). Typically, they are structured in four circular levels, called whorls, around the end of a stalk. These whorls include: calyx, m ...

– into color fields with a strong tendency towards autonomy. His strongly colored ''all-over'' images reinterpret things as abstract and then lead the back into figuration. In 2009 Held started to dedicate himself to the subject of ''flowers'': blossoms become compositions with a landscape character, and are distributed in equally strong colors across the

canvas Canvas is an extremely durable Plain weave, plain-woven Cloth, fabric used for making sails, tents, Tent#Marquees and larger tents, marquees, backpacks, Shelter (building), shelters, as a Support (art), support for oil painting and for other ite ...

. Thus they gain lyrical overtones and additional brightness. Hence Held has also begun to contrast figurative elements (such as the sky) - intentionally without painterly differentiation - with a hatching-like color field technique; this in traditional, monumental formats of his work.

Exhibitions (selection)

* 2011 – 2012 ''Kleine Welten – Große Kunst im kleinen Format'', CAS,

Salzburg Salzburg is the List of cities and towns in Austria, fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020 its population was 156,852. The city lies on the Salzach, Salzach River, near the border with Germany and at the foot of the Austrian Alps, Alps moun ...

, Austria * 2009 ''Monuments in Time'', Michael Schultz Gallery,

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, China * 2009 ''River deep, Mountain high'', Michael Schultz Gallery,

* 2008 ''Walk the Line'', Cooperativa de Actividades Artísticas,

Porto Porto (), also known in English language, English as Oporto, is the List of cities in Portugal, second largest city in Portugal, after Lisbon. It is the capital of the Porto District and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto c ...

(Portugal) * 2008 ''Close-Up'', Por Amor À Arte Galeria,

(Portugal) * 2007 ''100 Jahre Kunsthalle Mannheim'',

Kunsthalle Mannheim The Kunsthalle Mannheim is a museum of modern and contemporary art, built in 1907, established in 1909 and located in Mannheim, Germany. Since then it has housed the city's art collections as well as temporary exhibitions – and up to 1927 those ...

* 2007 ''Path of the sun'', Keumsan Gallery, Heyri (Korea) * 2007 ''Auf dem Weg ins Licht'', Sammlung de Knecht,

Kunsthalle Rostock The Rostock Art Gallery () was opened on 15 May 1969 as a museum of contemporary art in Rostock in the German federal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It is in the grounds of the park around the Schwanenteich lake in the quarter of Reutershagen. ...

* 2006 ''Uzpuolimas!'', Gallerija Vartai,

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

(Lithuania) * 1998 ''Berliner Fenster'', Galerie Brusberg,

Full list
at Held's gallery representation.

External links

Representation at Michael Schultz Gallery

Representation at Gallery Kampl, Munich, Germany

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Held, Burkhard Berlin University of the Arts alumni 1953 births German contemporary artists 21st-century German painters 21st-century German male artists German male painters Living people 20th-century German painters 20th-century German male artists