Jorg Immendorff

Jorg Immendorff is a painter, draughtsman, and sculptor whose work often reflected upon German history with touches of surrealism, irony, and symbolism. He studied with Joseph Beuys and was expelled from university for his left-wing political statements and Neo-Dadaist actions. His earliest works in the 1960s were inspired by the transition of babies from infants to speaking and emotional human beings, using it to inspire performances and public demonstrations that addressed the stunted growth of his homeland. He painted in opposition to the Minimalist and Conceptual avant garde, and came to be associated with the Neo-Expressionists including Sigmar Polke and George Baselitz. Starting in the 1970s he worked closely with artist A.R. Penck in the junge wilde (wild youth) style, using intense color, broad brushstrokes, and quick movements to render genre scenes of bars and parks in Germany. Figures were a metaphor for East and West Germany, often indebted to the symbolism used in early political posters seen in the 1970s. Immendorff also designed sets, generated costumes for the opera, and created outdoor sculptures of wood or cast in bronze prior to his death from Lou Gehrig’s Disease in 2007.

The artist’s work has been shown at institutions since 1965 including Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile, MAGASIN-Centre National d’art Contemporain de Grenoble, France, Musee d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Saatchi Gallery, London, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, and Musee Nacional d’Art Moderne, Paris, among many others. His work has been shown at international art exhibitions including the Venice Biennale, the Beijing International Art Biennale, and SITE Santa Fe, to name a few. Immendorff won the MARCO prize from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1997 and a merit medal of the Federal Republic of Germany the following year.