Gunther Forg

The German painter, sculptor and photo artist Günther Förg was born on December 5, 1952 in Füssen in the Allgäu. From 1973 to 1979 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Karl Fred Dahmen. In order to earn a living as a student, Förg repeatedly worked as a painter. The experience gained from this work flowed into his artistic oeuvre. Förg does not limit himself to canvas paintings, but experiments early on with mural painting, with lead or wood as a picture carrier, with oil and acrylic paints as well as plaster, gold leaf or chalks for his painting. Abstract painting of color surfaces, grid and grid structures, as well as artistic architectural photography. Many of Günther Förg's paintings divide the picture carrier or the wall into horizontal or vertical color surfaces, show grid and raster structures in a loose painting style. This radical simplification also characterizes Günther Förg's photographic work, which emerges on an equal footing with his painterly work from 1980 onwards. His interest is in artistic architectural photography, the arrangement of lines of the object, space and view perceived by the camera, which is to be captured on the surface. A frequently recurring favorite motif is the window, whereby the wall surface around the window as well as the view through this opening are of equal interest to Förg. Günther Förg largely dispenses with a narrative element in his art; it is never a matter of metaphysically charging what is depicted. "For me, abstract art today is what you see and no more," Günther Förg says about his art will in an interview. And yet it is precisely through this renunciation that his works have a concentrated effect on the surrounding space and the viewer. Günther Förg intentionally presents the exciting photographs behind non-reflective glass, so that photography and surrounding space, photography and viewer are in relation to each other. The colors of his full-surface murals allow the architecture to come to the fore, emphasizing the structure of the space. The intuitive coloring of the paintings is of extraordinary power, showing the artist's desire for rapid brushstrokes and the craft of painting, which sets the image in vibration. Important representative of German post-war art. As early as 1980, the Schöttle Gallery in Munich shows Günther Förg's first solo exhibition. In 1992 Günther Förg takes part in the documenta IX in Kassel. In 1995 the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam shows an exhibition. Numerous further exhibitions worldwide make Günther Förg known as one of the most interesting artists of the German post-war generation, who in his work deals intensively with the tradition of geometric abstraction in Europe and the USA in order to develop his very own variant from it. 1992-1998 Förg holds the professorship for painting at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe. In 1999 Günther Förg returned to his own teaching institution, the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, as professor of painting, where he worked until 2013. The Museum Brandhorst as well as the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich have a rich collection of works by the artist. Likewise, Günther Förg's works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Tate Modern, London, or the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. In 1996 Förg was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize of the City of Cologne, and in 2003 he received the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon. Günther Förg succumbed to cancer on his 61st birthday and died on December 5, 2013 in Freiburg im Breisgau.