Post War Sculptures — A1162: D x C – Artists from the Rhineland
Mary Hildegard Ruth Bauermeister was a German artist who worked in sculpture, drawing, installation, performance, and music. Influenced by Fluxus artists and Nouveau Réalisme, her work addresses esoteric issues of how information is transferable through society. Beginning in the 1970s, her work concentrated on the themes surrounding New Age spirituality, specifically geomancy, the divine interpretation of lines on the ground.
Jörg Immendorff was a German painter and sculptor, stage designer and decorator, and a member of the New Wild movement.
Immendorff painted in cycles that often lasted for years and were political in nature. His series of sixteen large paintings, Café Deutschland (1977-1984), is well known. In these colorful paintings, numerous disco lovers symbolize the conflict between East and West Germany.
Immendorff prepared several stage productions and designed sets for the operas Elektra and The Rider's Voyage. 25 of Immendorf's paintings were selected in 2006 for the illustrated Bible.
Norbert Prangenberg was an abstract painter, sculptor, and engraver. Though he had no formal training and did not fully engage with art until his 30s, Prangenberg did finally come up with a style that was uniquely his own, not fitting comfortably into the neo-expressionist or neo-geo movements of his time, in the 1970s and 1980s. At this time, he was considered a major figure in contemporary German art. Though he got his start with abstract paintings, he also became known for making sculptures of all sizes; and while his work initially appears abstract, the titles given sometimes allude to the human body or a landscape. As a trained gold- and silversmith, as well as a glassblower, he always showed an attention to materials and how they could be physically engaged with. He was interested in how his own two hands could affect the painting or sculpture's surface. Traces of the artist's hand appear literally throughout his entire oeuvre, before he lost the battle with liver cancer in 2012.