BERLIN (AP) — German artist Günther Uecker, one of many nation’s most necessary post-war artists who was world-famous for his large-format nail reliefs, has died. He was 95.
German information company dpa reported that his household confirmed he died on the college hospital in his hometown of Düsseldorf in western Germany Tuesday night time. They didn’t give a explanation for dying.
For many years, Uecker, who was typically dubbed “the nail artist,” created artwork by hammering carpenter’s nails into chairs, pianos, stitching machines and canvases. His works may be present in museums and collections throughout the globe.
In his artwork work, seemingly limitless numbers of nails, which might by themselves maybe be perceived as probably aggressive and hurtful, became harmonic, virtually natural creations. His reliefs with the tightly hewn nails are harking back to waving grasses or fields of algae in a marine panorama.
Uecker himself described his nail artwork as diary-like landscapes of the soul, which he referred to as an “expression of the poetic power of man,” dpa reported.
Hendrik Wüst, the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia which incorporates state capital Düsseldorf, referred to as Uecker “one of the most important and influential artists in German post-war history” and mentioned that together with his life’s work, he influenced generations of younger artists and “contributed to an open and dynamic society.”
Born on March 13, 1930, within the village of Wendorf on the Baltic Sea, Uecker moved to Düsseldorf within the mid-Nineteen Fifties, the place he studied and later additionally taught on the metropolis’s prestigious artwork academy.
In one among his most spectacular appearances or artwork happenings, he rode on the again of a camel by the hallways of the venerable academy in 1978. Along with fellow artist Gerhard Richter, he “occupied” the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden museum in 1968, with each kissing in entrance of the cameras.
The son of a farmer, he traveled the world with a humanitarian message of peace and exhibited in numerous international locations, together with dictatorships and totalitarian states. He painted ash footage after the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine in 1986, and exhibited human rights messages painted on cloth in Beijing.
He additionally painted “Verletzungswörter,” or phrases of violence, killing and torment in lots of languages and international scripts on massive canvases. In 2023, Uecker erected a stone memorial in Weimar in reminiscence of the victims of the Nazi focus camp Buchenwald.
“The theme of my artistic work is the vulnerability of man by man,” he mentioned.
