Günther Uecker German, 1930

Günther Uecker (Wendorf, Germany 1930)

Born in 1930, after studying painting in Wismar, Günther Uecker moved from the German Democratic Republic to Düsseldorf, where he attended the Academy of Arts. From 1955, he produced his first informal paintings with shapes in relief, incorporating plastic elements.

In Düsseldorf, Uecker came into contact with the ZERO group and artists Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, who advocated a new beginning in art against German Informalism.

Uecker’s research moves between light media, optical phenomena and particular sequences that actively involve the viewer, influencing their visual process through motor or manual interventions. In 1962, Uecker set up a “Room of Light” with Mack and Piene at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and at the Fine Arts Palace in Paris.

Further “Salons” followed in Krefeld and Frankfurt. From the early 1960s, especially after 1966 and the dissolution of ZERO and a last joint exhibition, Uecker began to use nails as his primary medium – a material still at the centre of his work today. Uecker's earlier artworks put nails through everyday items, later developing into compositions made entirely of nails, creating undulating surfaces.

The nails simultaneously allude to the ideas of construction and destruction.

From 1974 to 1995, Uecker taught as a professor at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf. In 1999, he took over the design of the prayer room in the new Reichstag building in Berlin. Günther Uecker has received prizes and honours for his art, including the Federal Cross of Merit, the Pour le mérite for Science and the Arts and the State Prize of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Mecklenburg-Vorpommern State Library has also borne the artist's name since 2015.

Copyright the artist. Photo UniCredit Group