Krefeld, also spelled Crefeld until 1925, is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located northwest of Düsseldorf, its center lying just a few kilometers to the west of the river Rhine; the borough of Uerdingen is situated directly on the Rhine. Because of its economic past, Krefeld is often referred to as the "Velvet and Silk City". It is accessed by the autobahns A57 (Cologne–Nijmegen) and A44 (Aachen–Düsseldorf–Dortmund–Kassel).
The Deutscher Werkbund is a German association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists established in 1907. The Werkbund became an important element in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the later creation of the Bauhaus school of design. Its initial purpose was to establish a partnership of product manufacturers with design professionals to improve the competitiveness of German companies in global markets. The Werkbund was less an artistic movement than a state-sponsored effort to integrate traditional crafts and industrial mass production techniques, to put Germany on a competitive footing with England and the United States. Its motto Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau indicates its range of interest.
Luc Tuymans is a Belgian visual artist best known for his paintings which explore people's relationship with history and confront their ability to ignore it. World War II is a recurring theme in his work. He is a key figure of the generation of European figurative painters who gained renown at a time when many believed the medium had lost its relevance due to the new digital age.
Johan Thorn Prikker was a Dutch artist who worked in Germany after 1904. His activities were very eclectic, including architecture, lithography, furniture, stained-glass windows, mosaics, tapestries and book covers as well as painting. He also worked in a variety of styles; such as Symbolism, Impressionism and Art Nouveau.
Stefan Kürten is a contemporary German artist who lives and works in Düsseldorf. Known for his intricate paintings of domestic and urban landscapes, Kürten has exhibited extensively since 1984 and his work is held in a number of collections in Europe and the United States.
Ewald Wilhelm Hubert Mataré was a German painter and sculptor, who dealt with, among other things, the figures of men and animals in a stylized form.
Heinrich Mathias Ernst Campendonk was a painter and graphic designer born in Germany who became a naturalized Dutch citizen.
Haus Lange and Haus Esters are two residential houses designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Krefeld, Germany, for German industrialists Hermann Lange and Josef Esters. They were built between 1928 and 1930 in the Bauhaus style. The houses have now been converted into museums for Contemporary art.
Abraham David Christian is a German sculptor.
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle is an American conceptual artist known for multidisciplinary, socially oriented sculpture, video and installations and urban community-based projects of the 1990s. His work often explores a dialectical relationships involving minimalist aesthetics, the utopian ambitions of modernism and science, and the resulting—often negative—social, geopolitical and ecological consequences of such ideologies. New York Times critic Holland Cotter wrote that Manglano-Ovalle was adept in "distilling complex ideas into inviting visual metaphors," while Jody Zellen described his work as "infused with a formal elegance and sociopolitical content." Manglano-Ovalle has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, MASS MoCA, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (MCA), and participated in Documenta 12, the Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, and Bienal de São Paulo. He has been recognized with MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and his work belongs to the collections of forty major institutions. He has been a professor at Northwestern University since 2012 and lives and works in Chicago.
Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla are a collaborative duo of visual artists who live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They were the United States Representatives for the 2011 Venice Biennale, the 54th International Art Exhibition, in 2011.
Zvi Goldstein is an Israeli visual artist living in Jerusalem.
Peter Angermann is a German painter based in Nuremberg.
Ivo Ringe is a German artist, who is classified as a concrete art painter. He is also a docent and a curator of international group exhibitions.
Thomas Huber is a Swiss artist who lived and worked in Mettmann near Düsseldorf for several years and is currently resident in Berlin.
Norbert Prangenberg was an abstract painter, sculptor, and engraver who was born in Nettseheim, just outside of Cologne, Germany. Though he had no formal training and did not fully engage with art until his 30s, Prangenberg did finally come up with a style that was uniquely his own, not fitting comfortably into the neo-expressionist or neo-geo movements of his time, in the 1970s and 1980s. At this time, he was considered a major figure in contemporary German art. Though he got his start with abstract paintings, he also became known for making sculptures of all sizes; and while his work initially appears abstract, the titles given sometimes allude to the human body or a landscape. As a trained gold- and silversmith, as well as a glassblower, he always showed an attention to materials and how they could be physically engaged with. He was interested in how his own two hands could affect the painting or sculpture's surface. Traces of the artist's hand appear literally throughout his entire oeuvre, before he lost the battle with liver cancer in 2012.
18. Oktober 1977 is the title of a series of paintings by Gerhard Richter. It is based on photographs that document the deaths of three leading activist of the Baader-Meinhof Group in the Stammheim Prison after the release of the hostages in the hijacking by four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine of Lufthansa Flight 181. The series shows events from a period of several years, from the capture of the terrorists to their burial. A youth portrait of Ulrike Meinhof occupies a special position.
Walther Lauffs was a German industrialist, and together with his wife Helga, a leading collector of post-war art.
Friedrich Deneken was a German art historian and museum director.
Max Creutz was a German art historian and curator of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum in Krefeld where he worked from 1922 until his death. In Cologne, in 1914 he was instrumental in the first exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund, Deutsche Werkbundausstellung. In Krefeld, he succeeded in acquiring modern art exhibits, including works by Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, and Alexej von Jawlensky. He included a substantial collection of art, crafts and design from the Bauhaus.
