The Kasper König Collection – His Private Choice: Day 1
Stephan Balkenhol is a German artist known for his sculptures capturing the human form. Based in France and Germany, he specializes in wood sculptures, reliefs, drawings, and graphic techniques like lithography, woodcuts, and stencils. His distinct style features roughly carved and vibrantly painted wooden sculptures, often depicting people, animals, and architecture.
Balkenhol's subjects lack emotions, often gazing into emptiness, resulting in a distant and enigmatic aura. Wood is his primary medium, with softer woods allowing precise facial details while maintaining imperfections like chips, knots, and tool marks. The artist adds paint as a finishing touch, accentuating anatomy and vitality. The textured surfaces beneath the paint layer amplify the sense of life in Balkenhol's works.
Bernhard (Bernd) Becher and Hilla Becher were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings and structures, often organised in grids. As the founders of what has come to be known as the 'Becher school' or the 'Düsseldorf School' they influenced generations of documentary photographers and artists. They have been awarded the Erasmus Prize and the Hasselblad Award.
John Angus Chamberlain was an American sculptor. At the time of his death he resided and worked on Shelter Island, New York.
Chamberlain is best known for creating sculptures from old automobiles (or parts of) that bring the Abstract Expressionist style of painting into three dimensions.
William Nelson Copley was an American painter, writer, gallerist, collector, patron, publisher and art entrepreneur. His works as an artist have been classified as late Surrealist and precursory to Pop Art.
William Nelson Copley was an American painter, writer, gallerist, collector, patron, publisher and art entrepreneur. His works as an artist have been classified as late Surrealist and precursory to Pop Art.
William Nelson Copley was an American painter, writer, gallerist, collector, patron, publisher and art entrepreneur. His works as an artist have been classified as late Surrealist and precursory to Pop Art.
Nicole Eisenman is French-born American artist known for her oil paintings and sculptures. She has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship (1996), the Carnegie Prize (2013), and has thrice been included in the Whitney Biennial (1995, 2012, 2019). On September 29, 2015, she won a MacArthur Fellowship award for "restoring the representation of the human form a cultural significance that had waned during the ascendancy of abstraction in the 20th century."
Peter Fischli and David Weiss, often shortened to Fischli/Weiss, were a Swiss artist duo that collaborated beginning in 1979. Their best-known work is the film Der Lauf der Dinge (1987), described by The Guardian as being "post apocalyptic", as it concerned chain reactions and the ways in which objects flew, crashed and exploded across the studio in which it was shot.
Katharina Fritsch is a German sculptor who lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.
She studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art and became known for her iconic and unusual sculptures and installations.
Fritsch's work often evokes disturbing religious or quasi-spiritual associations and is deeply psychological, as if she were trying to give an image to our deepest fears, extracted from the world of myth, religion, cultural history and everyday life. One of her most impressive works, Rat King (1993), is a circle of sixteen giant rats, each nearly ten feet tall, with their tails tied in a massive knot in the center.
Bruno Goller was a German painter. He received his painting training from the Düsseldorf landscape painter Julius Jungheim. Bruno Goller belonged to the artists' community "Das junge Rheinland", which he joined as early as 1920. In 1928 he participated in the founding of the "Rheinische Sezession".
Andreas Gursky, a German photographer born in 1955, is renowned for his large format architectural and landscape color photographs, which often feature a high vantage point. Gursky's work has garnered attention for its unique perspective on modern life and contemporary scenes, capturing the grandeur and intricacy of his subjects with a meticulous eye for detail. His pieces, such as "Rhein II" and "99 Cent II Diptychon," showcase his skill in transforming ordinary locales into extraordinary visual narratives, often with the aid of digital manipulation to enhance and refine the final image.
Andreas Gursky's photography is celebrated for its ability to capture the essence of globalization and the human impact on the environment, presenting scenes that are both familiar and alien in their scope and detail. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is held in high esteem in the art market, with some of his pieces achieving record-breaking auction prices.
For art collectors and experts, Andreas Gursky's photographs offer a profound commentary on the world we live in, blending technical prowess with a deep conceptual framework. His exhibitions and publications provide insight into his creative process and the evolution of his artistic vision.
To stay updated on Andreas Gursky's latest exhibitions and works, consider subscribing to updates from renowned art galleries or institutions that feature contemporary photography.
Karl Horst Hödicke is a German artist, a pioneer of German Neo-Expressionism and new figuration, and one of the most important representatives of German post-war painting.
After moving to Berlin in 1957, Hödicke encountered the eventful history of Berlin - the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War, and reunification - and reflected it in his paintings.
Candida Höfer is a German photographer. She is a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like other Becher students, Höfer's work is known for technical perfection and a strictly conceptual approach. From 1997 to 2000, she taught as professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe. Höfer is the recipient of the 2018 Outstanding Contribution to Photography award, as part of the Sony World Photography awards. She is based in Cologne.