Markus Lüpertz
The German painter, graphic artist, sculptor, poet and theater director Markus Lüpertz is one of the most important contemporary artists. His extensive oeuvre, which alternates between figurative and abstract work phases, is classified as "Junge Wilde" (Young Wild Ones), but due to its complexity it defies fixed attribution. The term "Junge Wilde" summarizes a style of painting that emerged in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne in the 1980s in response to the "First Neo-Expressionism" of the 1960s. With large-format, expressive-abstract works, a spontaneous painting style and a deliberate formlessness, artists such as Rainer Fetting, Helmut Middendorf and Martin Kippenberger took a stand against the "coolness" of Concept Art and Minimal Art. A new figurative, emotional and subjective art is the goal, which is characterized by a joyful narrative, liveliness and freedom of movement.
The subjective aspect is also central to Lüpertz's works; the motifs are characterized by archaic and classifying components, suggestion, monumentality of individual objects and emotionality. The examination of German history and Greek mythology is characteristic of his work.
From 1956 to 1961, Lüpertz studied at the Werkkunstschule Krefeld under Laurens Goossens, with stays at the Maria Laach monastery and the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Lüpertz was exmatriculated from the latter due to a work that the professor considered provocative and a brawl. From 1961 Lüpertz worked as a freelance artist in Düsseldorf and from 1962 in Berlin. In 1964, together with 15 other Berlin artists, including Karl Horst Hödicke, Hans-Jürgen Diehl and Wolfgang Petrick, he founded the self-help gallery "Grossgörschen 35" in order to bypass the official art market as a "producers' gallery". Lüpertz left the group a year later. In 1970 he was awarded the Villa Romana Prize. In 1974 Lüpertz organizes the 1st Berlin Biennale. From 1974, Lüpertz teaches painting at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. In 1982 he takes part in the documenta in Kassel. In 1986, he was appointed professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and was its rector from 1988 to 2009. In 2009, he became a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts and has been a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts at the Alte Spinnerei in Kolbermoor since 2014. Lüpertz has also been working as a theater director since 2021.
Lüpertz lives and works in Berlin, Karlsruhe and Düsseldorf. His studio is located in Teltow.
