Bildhauer: 3 German Women Rethinking Sculpture
Blinky Palermo
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German artist Blinky Palermo has been associated with distinct 20th-century art practices, from Abstraction to Minimalism and Conceptual art. Throughout his brief and influential career—leading all the way up to his untimely death at the age of 33—Palermo executed paintings, objects, installations, and works on paper that mined various contextual and semantic issues at stake in the construction, exhibition and reception of works of art.
Born Peter Schwarze in Leipzig, Germany, the artist entered the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1962, where he studied with Bruno Goller and then with Joseph Beuys. In 1964 he changed his name to Palermo, taking the pseudonym from the American boxing promoter Blinky Palermo. In 1968, Galerie Heiner Friedrich in Munich first showed Palermo’s wall drawings and five year later he moved to New York after visiting the city with Gerhard Richter. The artist is known for his “objects,” a self-coined category of work comprised of three-dimensional forms that hang or lean on a wall and seem to simultaneously occupy the realms of both painting and sculpture. In 1973 Palermo began his Metallbilder, or “metal pictures.” Executed in acrylic on thin sheets of aluminum or steel, these paintings explore the tensions and contrasts …
German artist Blinky Palermo has been associated with distinct 20th-century art practices, from Abstraction to Minimalism and Conceptual art. Throughout his brief and influential career—leading all the way up to his untimely death at the age of 33—Palermo executed paintings, objects, installations, and works on paper that mined various contextual and semantic issues at stake in the construction, exhibition and reception of works of art.
Born Peter Schwarze in Leipzig, Germany, the artist entered the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1962, where he studied with Bruno Goller and then with Joseph Beuys. In 1964 he changed his name to Palermo, taking the pseudonym from the American boxing promoter Blinky Palermo. In 1968, Galerie Heiner Friedrich in Munich first showed Palermo’s wall drawings and five year later he moved to New York after visiting the city with Gerhard Richter. The artist is known for his “objects,” a self-coined category of work comprised of three-dimensional forms that hang or lean on a wall and seem to simultaneously occupy the realms of both painting and sculpture. In 1973 Palermo began his Metallbilder, or “metal pictures.” Executed in acrylic on thin sheets of aluminum or steel, these paintings explore the tensions and contrasts between material and color; surface and depth; and signification and abstraction; thus exemplifying his ongoing experimentation with the symbolic and formal possibilities of composition and color.
Over the course of his short life, Palermo participated in more than 70 exhibitions worldwide, including Documenta 5 in 1972 and the XXXVII Venice Biennale in 1976, and he represented Germany at the São Paulo Bienal in 1975. He has had posthumous retrospectives at the Kunstmuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Dia:Beacon and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (CCS Bard).
Courtesy of David Zwirner
Born 1943
Works Available for Purchase
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