Günther Uecker, Untitled, 1985

lithograph, paper, 70 x 50.5 cm signed, dated and described at the bottom: H.C. Uecker 85

provenance: private collection, Germany Günther Uecker (1930, Wendorf, Mecklenburg) began his artistic education in 1949, taking up studies in Wismar. He continued his education in Berlin-Weißensee, and in 1955 began studying at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf in the studio of Otto Pankoek.

In 1960 he joined the ZERO group with Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, artists promoting a new beginning for art in opposition to German Informel. He dealt with the medium of light, exploring optical phenomena, strings of structures and spheres of oscillations that actively influence the viewer. Uecker, Mack and Piene began collaborating in joint conceptions as a group at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1962, which resulted in the creation of the "Salon de Lumière" at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Other "luminous chambers" followed in Krefeld and Frankfurt. Beginning in 1966, after the dissolution of the ZERO group and after their last joint exhibition, Uecker increasingly used nails as an artistic means of expression - a material that is still the center of his work today. In the early 1960s, he began hammering nails into furniture, musical instruments and household objects, and began combining nails with the motif of light. Light and electricity were among his main themes, and natural materials such as sand and water were incorporated into his installations, resulting in the interaction of various elements (light, space, movement and time).

Uecker's work includes painting, printmaking, installations, as well as set design and films. Uecker's work was greatly influenced by the Eastern European avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, which he often juxtaposed with the culture and ideas of Asian countries. Uecker's artistic work reaches its apogee in 2000 during the realization of the prayer hall he is designing for the rebuilt Reichstag building in Berlin. Uecker taught from 1974 to 1995 at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf and was appointed professor in 1976. Halina Jaworski was his first mistress (Meisterschülerin). Together with Otto Piene, Heinz Mack and Mattijs Visser, he founded the international ZERO Foundation in 2008.