Markus Lüpertz

now in our gallery

Markus Lüpertz was born on April 25 in Reichenberg, then part of Czechoslovakia. 

Markus Lüpertz began studying at the Werkkunstschule Krefeld (now part of the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences) and spent a long time at Maria Laach Abbey, where he worked intensively on religious themes. During his studies Lüpertz worked as a miner underground and in road construction to finance his education. A first excursion to the Düsseldorf Art Academy was not a success.

He moved to West Berlin, where his career as an artist began. Together with other artists spurned by the established art establishment, such as Ulrich Baehr, Hans-Jürgen Diehl, Leiv Warren Donnan, Hans-Georg Dornhege, Karl Horst Hödicke, Franz-Rudolf Knubel, Wolfgang Petrick, Peter Sorge, and Lambert Maria Wintersberger, he joined forces to form the exhibition association Großgörschen 35. With his "Dithyrambic Painting" and simple, representational images, he tried to break away from Pop Art and abstract expressionism. After a period of study in Florence, Markus Lüpertz took up a professorship at the Karlsruhe Art Academy, which he experienced as a time of personal liberation. Again and again Markus Lüpertz also published poems on subjects that moved him, among others on the French landscape painter Camille Corot.

In 1986 he moved from Karlsruhe to Düsseldorf, where he held the rectorship at the Art Academy until 2009. During his 20-year tenure, he attracted many internationally renowned artistic personalities to the Düsseldorf Academy, including Michael Buthe, Tony Cragg, Peter Doig, Jörg Immendorf, Albert Oehlen, and Rosemarie Trockel. He maintained friendly relations with other contemporary artists such as Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer and A. R. Penck.

Markus Lüpertz converted to Catholicism and regarded God and the church as the epitome of all pictorial creativity. Accordingly, he attached great importance to the stained glass windows he designed for churches in Nevers, France, and in Cologne and Lübeck. The church is the place where art finds its final destination - and is not only presented temporarily as in museums and galleries. Despite all this, the artist retained his independence and free spirit, oscillating at will between painting, sculpture, and poetry, and vehemently resisting any hint of an imposed dogma. He described the French artist Francis Picabia as a role model and precursor, who, like himself, cultivated an eccentric demeanor and did not accept any dogmas. Markus Lüpertz has received a large number of prizes and awards for his work, including such prestigious honors as the Villa Romana Prize (1970), the Esslingen Lovis Corinth Prize (1990), and the Leipzig International Mendelssohn Prize (2013).

Markus Lüpertz lives and works in Berlin, Karlsruhe and Düsseldorf. He is married and father of five children.

For more information about this work of Markus Lüpertz, we are of course at your disposal. You are welcome to view the artwork in person in our gallery - by appointment only.