Painting
Various groups played a part in the development of the German modern art scene. These included: the “Ecole de Paris”, which was established around 1940; “COBRA” (founded in 1948); “junger westen” (1948); “Zen 49” (1949); and “Quadriga” (1953).
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Parallel to the Tachiste movement in France, under the influence of surrealism, the “Ecole de Paris” and American “Abstraction”, a style of art emerged in Germany directly after the Second World War which, far removed from figurative painting or even abstraction, preferred as its general characteristic an abstract, gesticular, semi-automatic way of painting, which is never completely out of control and follows the principal of planned coincidence. The rich variety of the German art informel is manifest in the works of artists who have long since become internationally known: Karl Otto Götz, Bernard Schultze, Fred Thieler, Gerhard Hoehme, Karl Friedrich Dahmen, Emil Schumacher, Peter Brüning, K. R. H. Sonderborg.
At the beginning of the 1950s, almost all the artists in these informal groups sought liberation from the dogmas of figurative panel painting. Thus, different currents emerged to enrich the artistic spectrum in post- War Germany. These include color field painting, i.e., painting via the concrete, dispassionate medium of color, as Georg Karl Pfahler, Günter Fruhtrunk and Lothar Quinte focus on in their work. It also includes the Action art of the “doer” HA Schult and movements such as the happening initiated by Wolf Vostell and the Fluxus activities, which he profoundly influenced.
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Joseph Beuys set completely new standards, devising a new, unusual interpretation of art, opening up art to new dimensions, new fields of signification. His often misunderstood formulae, “art is life, life is art” and “every person is an artist”, his “events” with fat and felt, his ideas, rooted in Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, the rigorous way in which he managed to win over an ever increasing number of students at the Düsseldorf Academy: These are just some of the striking features in the life and work of Joseph Beuys. His “extended interpretation” of art provided him with an instrument which allowed him to champion “social sculpture” as the perfection of his artistic philosophy.
The Zero group also electrified the public early on with its type of happenings. Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker represent a type of artist, which, following the Nazi Holocaust, was no longer interested in following ideologies but rather in designing concrete pictures.
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The German art scene
Several of the painters and sculptors who have risen to prominence both in the Federal Republic and beyond have their roots in the GDR. These include A. R. Penck with his idols reminiscent of the Stone Age, Georg Baselitz with his paintings and sculptures heralding violence, Sigmar Polke with his playful, ironic pictures, and Gerhard Richter, who treads the fine line between figurative and abstract art, who skillfully shifts at will from representations reminiscent of the Old Masters to the most extreme forms of abstraction. They are important names in the German art scene, as are the sculptors Ulrich Rückriem and Jochen Gerz, performance artist Rebecca Horn, painters Jörg Immendorff, Anselm Kiefer, Markus Lüpertz and Hans Haacke, who with his installations and montage questions the world as it appears.
source: Facts about Germany
