Gerhard Merz
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| Gerhard Merz | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1947 Mammendorf, Germany |
| 🏳️ Nationality | German |
| 🏫 Education | Academy of Fine Arts, Munich |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| 🏅 Awards | Arnold-Bode-Preis |
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Gerhard Merz (1947, Mammendorf) is a German artist. He lives and works in Munich, Germany, and in Pesca, Italy. He is primarily known for his installations, which combine painting and architecture.
Life and work[edit]
Gerhard Merz studied from 1969 until 1973 at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, under Rudi Tröger. During his years before the Academy, from 1964 until 1969, he produced a great number of paintings in the style of Francis Bacon and Uwe Lausen. In the late 1960s Merz made metal sculptures, which recall the simple forms of the work of Walter de Maria.[1]:3
From the beginning of the 1970s Gerhard Merz made large monochromatic paintings and works covered with line grids. The monochromes are painted on unprepared canvas. Colour and ground merge and the brushwork is smooth. Merz made his own paint for these works with much pigment and little binder in order to achieve a matte surface. He first used earth tones, later grey tones and finally brighter colours for these works. He used the human figure as measurement for these works. They envelope the viewer due to their large format. There are two ways for the viewer to experience these paintings: viewing them as objects and relating to their proportions, or experiencing the space that the painted surface suggests. Both ways are valid.[1]:3-4 Gradually Merz incorporated silk-screen printed photographs in his monochromes.[2]
During the years Merz painted his monochromes, he also made pictures with line grids, drawn by pencil or with ink. He created these out of discontent with his monochromes, in which the process through which the painting was made was no longer visible in the final result. In the gridworks Merz strove for a higher transparency of the way in which the work was created by fusing process and result. All the steps by which the work were made are readable by the viewer.[1]:5 The quality of these works lies in the tension between the perfection Merz strove for and the unavoidable manual imperfections.[1]:6
In the 1980s Merz began making site-specific installations in his exhibitions.[2] He mounted large works in massive frames of wood or metal on coloured walls. From the end of the 1980s Merz continued his exploration of the relations between art and the architectural and spatial context surrounding it.[3] This connection was programmatic. Merz, who has dedicated his career to the exploration of the Modernist heritage, started from the idea that the tradition can only be continued with the use of architectural forms of expression. His systematic exploration of the architectural space relates to, among others, the work of Mies van der Rohe.[4] In his installations, which Merz calls Archipittura, he tries to realize the utopian, modernist dream of fusing art and architecture into a whole.[5] The most consistent of these installations was his contribution to the Venice Biennale of 1997. He filled the German pavilion with the largest possible block, surrounded only by white plastered walls and lit by two strips of neon tubes across the length of the space at a height of ten metres.[3]
Career[edit]
From 1977, Merz participated in documenta in Kassel, which awarded him the Arnold-Bode-Preis in 1983.[citation needed]
In 1998/1999, in collaboration with architect Hans Kollhoff, he contributed to the renovation of the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin with monochromatic wall paintings.[6]
In 1991 Merz became professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf; followed by an appointment as professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich in 2004.[citation needed]
Exhibitions[edit]
- 1977: documenta 6, Kassel
- 1978: Lenbachhaus, Munich
- 1981: Westkunst, Cologne
- 1982: documenta 7, Kassel
- 1984: Von hier aus - Zwei Monate neue deutsche Kunst in Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf
- 1986: Chambres d'Amis, Ghent
- 1987: documenta 8, Kassel
- 1992: Venice Biennale, Venice
- 1997: Kunstverein Bozen
- 2000: Kunstverein Hannover, Hanover
- 2002: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
- 2003: Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz
Awards[edit]
- 1983: Arnold-Bode-Preis
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Gerhard Merz (in German). Hermann Kern. München: Kunstraum München. 1975. ISBN 978-3-923874-11-8.CS1 maint: Unrecognized language (link) Search this book on
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Dictionary of artists. 9. Emmanuel Bénézit. Paris: Gründ. 2006. p. 815. ISBN 2-7000-3079-6. Search this book on
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Art at the turn of the millennium. Uta Grosenick, Burkhard Riemschneider, Lars Bang Larsen. Köln: Taschen. 1999. p. 342. ISBN 3-8228-7393-4. Search this book on
- ↑ Gerhard Merz: Archipittura (in German). 1. Frank Barth, Uwe M. Schneede, Holger Broeker. Stuttgart: Ed. Cantz. 1992. p. 9. ISBN 9783893224678.CS1 maint: Unrecognized language (link) Search this book on
- ↑ Gardner, Colin (1992). "Los Angeles: Gerhard Merz; Los Angeles County Museum of Art". Artforum. 30 (10): 116.
- ↑ "Architektur". Auswärtiges Amt (in Deutsch). Retrieved 2021-11-11. Unknown parameter
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- 1947 births
- 20th-century German artists
- 20th-century German male artists
- 21st-century German artists
- 21st-century German male artists
- 20th-century German painters
- 21st-century German painters
- Academy of Fine Arts, Munich alumni
- Academic staff of the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
- Artists from Bavaria
- Contemporary artists
- German installation artists
- German male painters
- Academic staff of Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
- People from Fürstenfeldbruck (district)
