Franz Erhard Walther (born July 22, 1939, in Fulda, Germany) is an interdisciplinary installation and conceptual artist known for his fabric objects and activations.
Born in 1939 in Fulda, Walther studied successively at the Werkkunstschule Offenbach and the Städelschule from 1957. [1]
Walther later studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the early 1960s. [2] During his education his professor Karl Otto Götz said 'Mr. Walther, I do not understand at all what you are doing. But you are a serious young man. Go ahead.' He studied under Götz with among others Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter. [3] [4] [5]
Walther began to experiment with ways to actively involve spectators in the production of the work in the late 1950s. [6] At this time he produced 'word' pictures in a bid to force the viewer to create their own image. [6]
In the early 60s, Walther began to experiment with paper as the work itself rather than as a ground, displaying the work in stacks that the audience were invited to leaf through, or large books with which they could interact. [7] Between 1963 and 1969, he created the First Work Set, which consists of 58 activatable pieces that place the viewer in extraordinary interpersonal situations. [8] Under the influence of Pop Art, Walther's textiles became increasingly colorful. [8]
Walther moved to New York City in 1967 and stayed there until 1971. [9]
From 1971 to 2009, Walther was Professor at University of Fine Arts of Hamburg. [1] His Dust of Stars. A Drawn Novel (2007/9) is composed of 524 pages of pencil drawings and handwritten texts. [1]
Erhard's work was included in the show Spaces at the Museum of Modern Art in New York alongside that of Larry Bell, Michael Asher, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, and Pulsa. The exhibit ran from December 30, 1969, until March 1, 1970. [10]
In 2008, Walther's WERKSATZ (WORKSET) was performed at the Tate Modern in London as part of "UBS Openings: Live – The Living Currency". [11] Other exhibitions were held at the Hamburger Kunsthalle (2013) [12] and Dia Beacon (2021–2022). [13]
Walther's work has been included in four editions of Documenta in Kassel, Germany; 1972, 1977, 1982, and 1987. [13]
In 2023, Walther was commissioned by Performa for the Performa 23 biennial for which he created his work Creation Needs Action .
Walther's work is in many public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dia Art Foundation, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. [14]
In 1989, Walther was awarded the Edwin Scharff Prize and in 1994 the Piepenbrock Prize for Sculpture. [15] [16] [5]
In 2017, Walther was awarded the Golden Lion for the Best Artist in the Central Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. [17]
Raymond Pettibon is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. Pettibon came to prominence in the early 1980s in the southern California punk rock scene, creating posters and album art mainly for groups on SST Records, owned and operated by his older brother, Greg Ginn. He has subsequently become widely recognized in the fine art world for using American iconography variously pulled from literature, art history, philosophy, and religion to politics, sport, and sexuality.
Gerhard Richter is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German artists and several of his works have set record prices at auction, with him being the most expensive living painter at one time.
Horst Janssen was a German draftsman, printmaker, poster artist and illustrator. He had a prolific output of drawings, etchings, woodcuts, lithographs and wood engravings.
The Hamburger Kunsthalle is the art museum of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany. It is one of the largest art museums in the country. It consists of three connected buildings, dating from 1869, 1921 (Kuppelsaal) and 1997, located in the Altstadt district between the Hauptbahnhof and the two Alster lakes.
Jonathan Meese is a German painter, sculptor, performance artist, and installation artist based in Berlin and Hamburg. Meese's works include paintings, collages, drawings and writing. He also designs theater sets and wrote and starred in a play, De Frau: Dr. Poundaddylein - Dr. Ezodysseusszeusuzur in 2007 at the Volksbühne Theater. He is mainly concerned with personalities of world history, primordial myths and heroes. Jonathan Meese lives and works in Ahrensburg and Berlin.
Carlos Amorales is a multidisciplinary artist who studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. The most extensive researches in his work encompass Los Amorales (1996-2001), Liquid Archive (1999–2010), Nuevos Ricos (2004–2009), and a typographic exploration in junction with cinema (2013–present).
David Tremlett is an English/Swiss sculptor, installation artist and photographer. He lives and works in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire, England. He is married to Laure Genillard who runs an art space in London, they were married in 1987.
Gotthard Graubner was a German painter, born in Erlbach, in Saxony, Germany.
Edwin Scharff was a German sculptor. He was born in Neu-Ulm and died in Hamburg.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is a French visual artist and educator. She is known for her work in video projection, photography, and art installations. She has worked in landscaping, design, and writing. "I always look for experimental processes. I like the fact that at the beginning I don't know how to do things and then, slowly, I start learning. Often exhibitions don't give me this learning possibility anymore."
Horst Gläsker is a German artist. His work is a symbiosis of music, dance, theatre, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and architecture.
Karl Otto Götz often simply called K.O. Götz, was a German artist, filmmaker, draughtsman, printmaker, writer and professor of art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He was one of the oldest living and active artists older than 100 years of age and is best remembered for his explosive and complex abstract forms. His powerful, surrealist-inspired works earned him international recognition in exhibitions like documenta II in 1959. Götz never confined himself to one specific style or artistic field. He also explored generated abstract forms through television art. Götz is one of the most important members of the German Art Informel movement. His works and teachings influenced future artists such as Sigmar Polke, Nam June Paik and Gerhard Richter. He lived in Wolfenacker from 1975 until his death.
Hanne Darboven was a German conceptual artist, best known for her large-scale minimalist installations consisting of handwritten tables of numbers.
Hans-Jürgen Schult, known professionally as HA Schult, is a German installation, happening and conceptual artist known primarily for his object and performance art and more specifically his work with garbage. He is one of the first artists to deal with the world's ecological imbalance in his work and has therefore been called an "eco-art pioneer". His best known works include the touring work, Trash People, which exhibited on all continents, and the Save The Beach hotel, a building made of garbage.
The Edwin Scharff Prize has been awarded annually by the city of Hamburg since 1955, named after sculptor Edwin Scharff. The prize is awarded to artist who shaped the cultural life of Hamburg. The winners are chosen by a seven-member jury, which is appointed by the Senate. The prize money is €15,000.
Astrid Klein is a German contemporary artist. Klein works in a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, text, photography and installation and sculpture.
Monica Bonvicini is a German-Italian artist who works with installation, sculpture, video, photography and drawing mediums. Bonvicini describes her practice as an exploration of relationshsips between architecture and space, power, gender and sexuality.
Werner Hofmann was an Austrian art historian, cultural journalist, writer, curator and museum director, who is "considered by his colleagues as one of the most distinguished European scholars of modern art and its ideology."
Simon Fujiwara is a British artist.
Anne Imhof is a German visual artist, choreographer, and performance artist who lives and works between Frankfurt and Paris. She is best known for her endurance art, although she cites painting as central to her practice.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)