MARKUS LÜPERTZ

Exhibition:
- Zurich 1986, Markus Lüpertz. Skulpturen in Ton. Galerie Maeght Lelong, October – November.
- Karlsruhe 1991, Markus Lüpertz. Rezeptionen-Paraphrasen. Städtische Galerie im Prinz-Max-Palais, October - December.
- Karlsruhe 1999 - 2002, Permanent loan, Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe.

Literature:
- Dupin, Jacques/Blistène,Bernard, Markus Lüpertz. Skulpturen in Ton. Zurich 1986 (ill. no. 1).
- Schulz-Hoffmann, Carla, and others: Markus Lüpertz. Rezeptionen - Paraphrasen. Karlsruhe 1991, no. 72 (ill. 116).
- Schmalenbach, Werner, and others: Landesausstellung 1990. Ursprung und Moderne. Linz 1990, p. 46.
- Paparoni, Demetrio. Art in wonderland. Markus Lüpertz, in: Tema Celeste, International Art Review, no.25, April-June 1990, p. 30 (ill. p. 32).
- Schmeller, Véronique. Eighty. Paris 1990 (ill. p. 129).

In the 1960s in Germany a young generation of artists emerged who were to alter art and the cultural world for years to come.

They all had a political standpoint, so that critiques of the economic miracle and society were a constant theme; at the same time, this very society chafed at the provocative new art. However, these artists questioned the conventional concept of art and traditional formal principles and sought their own way forward. Alongside Markus Lüpertz, members of this generation included Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorf and A.R. Penck, who were all in their different ways to return to figural expressionist painting.

Markus Lüpertz fled with his family from Bohemia to the Rhineland in 1948. After two unsuccessful attempts at an apprenticeship, between 1956 and 1961 he attended the Werkkunstschule in Krefeld and earned money working in mining and road building. His studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf only lasted a year and he was then unenrolled. Even his commitment to the French Foreign Legion was of short duration. In 1962 he then moved to West Berlin, in order to avoid military service; and here his real artistic career started. With Hödicke, Diehl, Petrick and Sorge, Lüpertz founded the cooperative gallery “Grossgörschen 35”. In 1969 Klaus Gallwitz exhibited his works for the first time in a show in Baden-Baden. In the following year, he received the Villa Romana prize and spent a year in Florence. In 1974 he was appointed professor of painting at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe and in 1988 he became director of the most important art academy in Germany, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, a post he held for 20 years. He brought in internationally renowned artists as professors, such as Jannis Kounellis and Rosemarie Trockel, and influenced an entire generation of German artists.

In 1986 Markus Lüpertz created an impressive series of clay sculptures, which at a primary level show the influence of Picasso and Giacometti, with a detailed knowledge of the art of the Expressionists and their models in primitive art, which is not to be dismissed lightly. Nevertheless, these rough, bulky sculptures are not about the depiction of a woman or a message using the vehicle of art, but a question as to what art and the sculptor can produce and what this triggers in the viewer, as Jacques Dupin describes incisively:

„ Die Arbeit Lüpertz‘: Entzückung und Entführung, das Wiedererscheinen eines verbrannten Erbes, die Urbarmachung der Wüste … Durch das Anhäufen von Gespenstern und das Abziehen von Materie und, umgekehrt, durch die Vertreibung des Gespenstes mit dem Atem und der Erschaffung eines fremden Körpers. Es ist ein Hymnus – die immer gleiche Dithyrambe – auf die Frau, auf die unmögliche Gottheit, deren straffe und gebrochene Nackheit aus der Kühle ihrer Kerben und in ihren aufstiebenden Eruptionen zum Leben erwacht. Als würde sie jedesmal aus dem Auseinanderbersten ihrer Spannungen, aus ihrem skulpturalen Erscheinen, aus der Entfaltung ihrer Weiblichkeit neu geboren. Eine Weiblichkeit, die um so vollendeter ist, als sie unvollständig bleibt, um so intensiver strahlt, als sie liebevoll gemartert wurde.“ (cit. Jacques Dupin, in: Exh. Cat: Markus Lüpertz. Skulpturen in Ton, October – November 1986, Zurich 1986).