Latest news with #Uecker
Boston Globe
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Günther Uecker, who punctuated his art with nails, dies at 95
In 1957, he hammered nails into the edges of a yellow monochrome painting so that they stuck out like spines or thorns. Those were the first of thousands more nails he would go on to hammer — into columns, wooden spheres, chairs, televisions, and canvases painted white. Like other artists in the broader movement he spearheaded with Mack and Piene, Mr. Uecker wanted his materials, and the purity of a simple gesture, to speak for themselves. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Mr. Uecker's approach was rich with symbolic and philosophical resonance. It made visible the sustained, almost violent effort it takes to shape the world with one's hands, and the power of repetition to bring about complexity. Every nail rose from its surface in a rigid, invariant line, but together they also cast shadows, formed intricate patterns, and stood at various angles. They even had room for the kind of expressive gestures Mr. Uecker and his colleagues had ostensibly rejected: In his 5-foot-square 'White Bird,' made in 1964, hundreds of nails driven into a white canvas resembled both a flock of starlings and the shadow of a single flying bird. Advertisement Mr. Uecker died June 10 in Düsseldorf. His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son Jacob. He was 95. Advertisement In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife, Christine Uecker, who runs the Uecker Archive with Jacob; his children Marcel Uecker-Hardung and Laura Uecker, from a previous marriage; and his sister Rotraut Moquay-Klein, an artist. Another sister, Edita Mathais, died in 1987. Nails were not Mr. Uecker's only medium. He covered chairs with string; built kinetic installations with motors and sand; designed sets; made films; staged exhibitions and what he called performance-art 'actions' all over the world; and painted the old-fashioned way, with canvas and paint. He also designed a meditation room for Germany's lower house of Parliament in Berlin, as well as soaring blue windows that were recently installed in Schwerin Cathedral, in the northern Germany city its named after. But for six decades nails remained his signature. Writing for Frieze in 2019, when Mr. Uecker was nearly 90, curator Glenn Adamson said, 'Whatever you are doing right now, there is a good chance that Günther Uecker is hammering.' After the death in 1962 of artist Yves Klein, his friend and brother-in-law, Mr. Uecker even found consolation in the practice. 'It was a way to process my emotions,' he said of his piece 'Hommage à Yves Klein' in a 2024 interview. 'I punched a canvas and the wooden boards behind it until my hands started bleeding. And then I stretched the canvas and splashed white paint onto it, because it seemed too literal. At the center of the work is my blood, resulting from the pain I felt over the fact that Yves Klein had fallen into the sky.' Advertisement Günther Uecker (pronounced GOON-ter OO-eck-er) was born March 13, 1930, in Wendorf, in northern Germany, the oldest child of Charlotte (Roeglin) and Walter Uecker, an engineer and mechanic. His parents later owned a farm in Wustrow, on the Baltic Sea. 'The inspiration for my work comes from nature,' Mr. Uecker told Matthew Wilcox for Apollo magazine in 2017. 'My father was a farmer, and I still believe our purpose in life is to bring the fruit from the earth.' In the same interview, he recalled the commingled smells of soil, animals, and airplane production during World War II, and being forced by Russian soldiers to bury corpses that had washed ashore from a downed prison boat. In 1953, Mr. Uecker slipped out of what had become the Communist-controlled German Democratic Republic into West Berlin. After studying art there while waiting to be processed as a refugee, he made his way to Düsseldorf and enrolled at the Kunstakademie, where his classmates included Joseph Beuys and Günter Grass. Zero Group began in Düsseldorf in the late 1950s when Piene and Mack began staging one-night studio exhibitions. They later befriended Klein, who joined them for some shows, and named their collective Zero Group, evoking the final tense, expectant moment of a rocket-ship countdown. Mr. Uecker was one of 45 artists to participate in the duo's seventh show, 'The Red Picture,' in April 1958; it was accompanied by the first of three issues of a Zero Group magazine. Advertisement He was soon inducted as the third core member of the group. A 1963 poem written jointly by Piene, Mack, and Mr. Uecker, published in connection with an exhibition at Galerie Diogenes in Berlin, expressed their shared ideas about their guiding symbol in evocative terms, if not very specific ones. 'Zero is silence. Zero is the beginning. Zero is round. Zero spins,' the poem begins, ultimately concluding, 'Zero is Zero.' Mr. Uecker showed work at Documenta 3, the contemporary art exhibition in Kassell, in 1964, both alone and, after a special appeal to the organizer, with Piene and Mack as part of Zero Group. That same year, the trio made their American institutional debut at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and their commercial debut at the Howard Wise Gallery in Manhattan. In 1965, Mr. Uecker was included in the group exhibition 'The Responsive Eye' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. By 1966, however, the group could no longer agree on a direction and decided to disband. Their final show, in Bonn, Germany, included Mr. Uecker's 'New York Dancer I,' in which a white cloth studded with clattering nails hung from a revolving post. In subsequent years, he represented Germany at the 1970 Venice Biennale, won a number of German art prizes and exhibited widely. He also taught for more than 20 years at the Kunstakademie. In a certain sense, his whole career was an extended expression of the special kind of possibility available to artists of his generation. 'When we looked at our parents and the neighbors,' he explained, 'we thought they were all murderers, they had been responsible for the war. Young people then were very free. We felt we could do it all.' Advertisement This article originally appeared in
Kuwait Times
14-06-2025
- General
- Kuwait Times
German artist who 'painted with nails', Guenther Uecker, dead at 95
German sculptor and installation artist Guenther Uecker, best known for his mesmerising artworks using thousands of nails, has died at age 95. His works, created from the 1950s, saw him hammer nails into furniture, TV sets, canvases and a tree trunk, creating undulating patterns, the illusion of movement and intricate shadow plays. While he became famous for using a hammer instead of a brush to "paint with nails", Uecker later also used other materials, from sand to stones and ash. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier hailed Uecker as "one of Germany's most important post-war artists" who broke new ground and, "with his nail reliefs, blurred our visual perceptions". Uecker was born on March 13, 1930, in Wendorf in what is now the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. He grew up on Wustrow, a peninsula north of the Baltic Sea port of Wismar, experiencing the horrors of World War II. A few days before the German surrender, the ship "Cap Arcona" sank near his hometown, with 4,500 concentration camp prisoners on board. Uecker helped bury the dead who washed up on shore, a traumatic experience he addressed decades later in his work "New Wustrow Cloths". Fearing the advance of the Russian Red Army, a young Uecker nailed shut the door of his family home from the inside to protect his mother and sisters. Uecker remembered that "panicked, instinctive act" in a 2015 TV documentary with public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk. "That had a profound impact on me and was perhaps a key experience for my later artistic work." 'Intrusiveness and aggression' Even as a child, Uecker was constantly drawing. This displeased his father, a farmer, who thought his son was "a failure and not quite normal", Uecker recalled in a 2010 interview with the Rheinische Post daily. As a young man in East Germany, Uecker in 1949 began an apprenticeship as a painter and advertising designer, then studied fine art. But Uecker, who wanted to study under his artistic idol Otto Pankok, fled East Germany in 1953 for West Berlin and soon transferred to the University of Dusseldorf. Uecker, who created his first nail paintings in the late 1950s, later said that the nail attracted him for its "intrusiveness, coupled with a strong potential for aggression", something he said he also carried within himself. In 1961, he joined the art group Zero of Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, who sought to counter the devastation of World War II with a spirit of optimism and lightness. Zero aimed to return art to its absolute basics, they wrote in their manifesto: "Zero is the beginning." Uecker's work often addressed contemporary issues. His ash paintings, for example, were a response to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. After xenophobic riots targeted migrants in a suburb of Rostock in 1992, he created a series called "The Tortured Man" which was exhibited in 57 countries. Uecker's works are exhibited in museums and galleries, but he also designed cathedral church windows and the prayer room of Berlin's Reichstag building housing the lower house of parliament. Asked once whether he was bothered by being known simply as the nail artist, he said he wasn't. "Something like that is necessary for identification ... People need a symbol, an emblem."--AFP
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Influential German 'nail artist' Günther Uecker dies aged 95
Günther Uecker, one of the most iconic and influential figures in post-war German art, has died at the age of 95. He was known around the world for his hypnotic nail reliefs - extraordinary textured surfaces created by hammering thousands of carpenter's nails into everyday objects like chairs, pianos, tree trunks, sewing machines, and canvases. His family confirmed he died at the university hospital in his hometown of Düsseldorf in western Germany on Tuesday night. They did not give a cause of death. Related V&A opens its vault: Public invited inside museum's massive new London storehouse Temporality, trees, and togetherness: Inside Marina Tabassum's 2025 Serpentine Pavilion Born in 1930 in the small Baltic village of Wendorf, the son of a farmer, Uecker rose to international fame from humble beginnings. After relocating to Düsseldorf in the 1950s, he studied and later taught at the city's revered art academy. He soon became part of the ZERO group, a radical post-war collective focused on light, movement, and purity in art. In 1956, inspired by Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky's belief that 'poetry is made with a hammer,' Uecker began hammering nails into canvases, chairs, and spinning disks. His early kinetic pieces created clattering soundscapes and optical effects that blurred the line between painting, sculpture, and performance. Uecker once rode a camel through the hallowed halls of the Düsseldorf Academy in a surreal 1978 art intervention, and in 1968, alongside fellow artist Gerhard Richter, famously "occupied" the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, their protest culminating in a kiss in front of the press. But beneath the playfulness ran a deep moral current. Uecker traveled the world with messages of peace, often creating works in countries under dictatorship or censorship. After the Chernobyl disaster, he painted using ash. He exhibited banners bearing messages of human rights in Beijing, and in a haunting series, painted words of violence -Verletzungswörter - in languages from around the globe. Despite international fame (his works now command over €1 million and appear at top galleries and fairs), Uecker retained an anti-establishment spirit. 'Don't join the establishment,' he told Apollo magazine in a late interview. In recent years, renewed global interest in the ZERO group, including a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 2014, brought his work to new audiences.
Euronews
11-06-2025
- Euronews
Turkistan – Crown Jewel of Central Asia's culture and religion
Turkistan – the city that lies in the hot, dry steppe of southwestern Kazakhstan. This ancient place of caravan sarays on the Silk Road, holy to the Muslims, attracts over a million visitors every year. Some of them come as pilgrims, to pay respects to the holy teacher Hoja Ahmad Jasawi, who wrote religious verses and taught disciples in the 12 the century. Some come simply to admire the old architecture and archeological treasures around. All of them flock, as by some kind of gravity, at the magnificent, awe-inspiring mausoleum built by Turco-Mongol conqueror and the founder of the Timurid Empire, Tamberlaine the Great. With its richly decorated blue-tile façade and imposing domes, the mausoleum is both the place of prayer and a tourist attraction. It is included in the UNESCO's list of cultural heritage. But the city is not just a place of history and religion. It offers many modern day attractions for tourists and one can enjoy ethno streets and engage in old crafts and martial arts, fly over Kazakhstan in the seat of the flying theater, visit museums or a great park. A modern park recreating oasis resting place for caravans offers shopping and an evening show on water. With Kazakhstan government making an effort to make the city more accessible by rail or air travel, one should definitely think about putting this place on the travel agenda. Günther Uecker, one of the most iconic and influential figures in post-war German art, has died at the age of 95. He was known around the world for his hypnotic nail reliefs - extraordinary textured surfaces created by hammering thousands of carpenter's nails into everyday objects like chairs, pianos, tree trunks, sewing machines, and canvases. His family confirmed he died at the university hospital in his hometown of Düsseldorf in western Germany on Tuesday night. They did not give a cause of death. Born in 1930 in the small Baltic village of Wendorf, the son of a farmer, Uecker rose to international fame from humble beginnings. After relocating to Düsseldorf in the 1950s, he studied and later taught at the city's revered art academy. He soon became part of the ZERO group, a radical post-war collective focused on light, movement, and purity in art. In 1956, inspired by Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky's belief that 'poetry is made with a hammer,' Uecker began hammering nails into canvases, chairs, and spinning disks. His early kinetic pieces created clattering soundscapes and optical effects that blurred the line between painting, sculpture, and performance. Uecker once rode a camel through the hallowed halls of the Düsseldorf Academy in a surreal 1978 art intervention, and in 1968, alongside fellow artist Gerhard Richter, famously "occupied" the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, their protest culminating in a kiss in front of the press. But beneath the playfulness ran a deep moral current. Uecker traveled the world with messages of peace, often creating works in countries under dictatorship or censorship. After the Chernobyl disaster, he painted using ash. He exhibited banners bearing messages of human rights in Beijing, and in a haunting series, painted words of violence -Verletzungswörter - in languages from around the globe. Despite international fame (his works now command over €1 million and appear at top galleries and fairs), Uecker retained an anti-establishment spirit. 'Don't join the establishment,' he told Apollo magazine in a late interview. In recent years, renewed global interest in the ZERO group, including a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 2014, brought his work to new audiences.
Euronews
11-06-2025
- General
- Euronews
Influential German 'nail artist' Günther Uecker dies aged 95
Günther Uecker, one of the most iconic and influential figures in post-war German art, has died at the age of 95. He was known around the world for his hypnotic nail reliefs - extraordinary textured surfaces created by hammering thousands of carpenter's nails into everyday objects like chairs, pianos, tree trunks, sewing machines, and canvases. His family confirmed he died at the university hospital in his hometown of Düsseldorf in western Germany on Tuesday night. They did not give a cause of death. Born in 1930 in the small Baltic village of Wendorf, the son of a farmer, Uecker rose to international fame from humble beginnings. After relocating to Düsseldorf in the 1950s, he studied and later taught at the city's revered art academy. He soon became part of the ZERO group, a radical post-war collective focused on light, movement, and purity in art. In 1956, inspired by Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky's belief that 'poetry is made with a hammer,' Uecker began hammering nails into canvases, chairs, and spinning disks. His early kinetic pieces created clattering soundscapes and optical effects that blurred the line between painting, sculpture, and performance. Uecker once rode a camel through the hallowed halls of the Düsseldorf Academy in a surreal 1978 art intervention, and in 1968, alongside fellow artist Gerhard Richter, famously "occupied" the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, their protest culminating in a kiss in front of the press. But beneath the playfulness ran a deep moral current. Uecker traveled the world with messages of peace, often creating works in countries under dictatorship or censorship. After the Chernobyl disaster, he painted using ash. He exhibited banners bearing messages of human rights in Beijing, and in a haunting series, painted words of violence -Verletzungswörter - in languages from around the globe. Despite international fame (his works now command over €1 million and appear at top galleries and fairs), Uecker retained an anti-establishment spirit. 'Don't join the establishment,' he told Apollo magazine in a late interview. In recent years, renewed global interest in the ZERO group, including a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 2014, brought his work to new audiences. Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Spain, where we lay our scene... A bastardised Shakespeare opening that suits the ongoing 'rivalry' between two family-owned taverns, who both claim to be the world's oldest establishments. There's Madrid's Sobrino de Botín, which holds the coveted Guinness World Record as the world's oldest restaurant. Founded in 1725 and located a stone's throw from the famed Plaza Mayor, it is famed for its wood-fire oven and has attracted patrons like Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald and was immortalised by Ernest Hemingway in his book 'The Sun Also Rises' - in which the author described Botín as 'one of the best restaurants in the world." It was awarded the Guinness accolade in 1987 and celebrated its 300 years of continuous service earlier this year. Then there's Casa Pedro, located on the outskirts of Madrid. The rustic tavern has boldly claimed that they have a shot at the title. The establishment has hosted Spanish King Juan Carlos I and current Spanish monarch King Felipe VI, and the owners assert their establishment endured the War of Spanish Succession at the start of the 18th century - therefore making Casa Pedro older than Botín. 'It's really frustrating when you say, 'Yes, we've been around since 1702,' but... you can't prove it,' says manager and eighth-generation proprietor Irene Guiñales. 'If you look at the restaurant's logo, it says 'Casa Pedro, since 1702,' so we said, 'Damn it, let's try to prove it.'' Guiñales' family has hired a historian and has so far turned up documents dating the restaurant's operations to at least 1750. She continues to hunt for records proving that Casa Pedro dates back to 1702. The question remains: How can either restaurant claim the title? Guinness provides its specific guidelines only to applicants, according to spokesperson Kylie Galloway, who notes that it entails 'substantial evidence and documentation of the restaurant's operation over the years." Antonio González, a third-generation proprietor of Botín, states that Guinness required Botín show that it has continuously operated in the same location with the same name. The only time the restaurant closed was during the pandemic – much like Casa Pedro. That criteria would mean that restaurants that are even older, like Paris' Le Procope, which says it was founded in 1686, aren't eligible for the Guinness designation. To make matters dicier, an Italian trattoria located in Rome's historic center, may pip both Sobrino de Botín and Casa Pedro to the post and steal the cake. Nestled on Vicolo della Campana, La Campana claims 'a taste of authentic Roman cuisine with a side of history' and more than 500 years of operation, citing documents on its menu and a self-published history. Its owners have said they have compiled the requisite paperwork and plan to submit it to Guinness. The battle of tasty households continues... Let's hope that chef blood won't make chef hands unclean.
