Günther Förg (born 5 December 1952 in Fuessen, southern Bavaria) is a prominent German painter, graphic designer, sculptor, and photographer. His abstract style is influenced by American abstract painting.
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Förg studied from 1973 until 1979 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Karl Fred Dahmen. From 1992 until 1999, he taught at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe. In 1996, he was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize. Since 1999, he has worked as a professor in Munich. Günther Förg lives in Areuse.
Günther Förg's artistic oeuvre encompasses paintings, graphic and sculptural works as well as a great body of architectural photographs. His geometrical, abstract, and heavily-dyed pictures have a strong decorative character. Förg combines materials and media in painting, sculpture and photography. The themes of his large scale architectural photographs are Bauhaus and fascist aesthetics, while his monochrome wall paintings and lead paintings are reflections on art.
Between 1973 (Förg’s first year as a student at The Academy of Fine Art Munich) and 1976, Förg painted almost exclusively black monochrome canvas pictures in acrylic, which, with the addition of a translucent grey, produced a milky, veiled surface effect. After the death of his artistic colleague, Blinky Palermo, Förg pursued the latter’s European legacy of American Minimal Art from 1977.[1]
In the early 1980s, he made his so-called Alubilder – assemblages of aluminium sheeting onto which the artist had painted linear patterns or portrait photographs.[2]
Förg started using photography ih his work at the beginning of the 1980s.[3] In the area of photography he is known for his works from 1980-2006, primarily on famous architectural sites such as the Wittgenstein House, Casa Malaparte and Casa del Fascio. Förg's photographic research using a 35 mm camera and zoom lense presents the uncompromisingly modern architecture in an unembellished way, sometimes delapidated, often featuring careless renovations or additions.[4]
In 1988, as part of the Sculpture in the City exhibition, Förg installed two metres-long walls of mirrors in a Rotterdam tube station; they were demolished in 1999.[5]
Since 1992, paintings and works on paper, known and documented in literature as "Gitterbilder" (grid paintings), appear in Günther Förg's work. The roots are to be found in an earlier series, the so-called "Fenster-Aquarelle" (window watercolors): the crossbar forms a grid for the space in the image, which provides the frame for a whole flow of paintings without limiting their free display and development.[6]
In a recent group exhibition in Berlin, "60 Jahre / 60 Werke ", celebrating the 60th birthday of the Federal Republic of Germany, Förgs showed five photographs: "Ida", 1985/86 (180x120cm) ; "Treppenhaus München", 1986 (180x120cm) ; "Michaela" , 1986 (180x120cm) , "Asilo d'infanzia , Sant Elia , Como", 1986 , (180x120cm), and "Asilo d'Infanzia , Sant Elia, Como", 1986 (180x120cm)
Förg is mentioned in "Art Now vol. 3 ", (Taschen Verlag, 2009) as being amongst the most interesting living contemporary artists. According to Artinvestor Magazine (2009), Förg ranks 23rd globally amongst living artists when several factors are combined, such as collections, auction results and gallery representation.
Förg had his first solo exhibition at Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery, Munich, in 1980 with a series of monochrome paintings. In 1992, his work could be seen at the documenta IX, followed by an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1995. Förg has had solo exhibitions at Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria, Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany, Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany; Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, The Netherlands; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv; Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz; and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. In 2007, he opened for the first time an exhibition in his birthplace Fuessen.[7]