Background

Jiří Georg Dokoupil was born on June 3, 1954, Krnov, Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia).

Education

Jiří Georg Dokoupil relocated to Germany with his family after the Prague Spring events of 1968.

He entered the Academy of Media Arts Cologne in 1976. After graduating two years later, he attended the Universities of Frankfurt and the Cooper Union in New York City. Hans Haacke, one of Dokoupil's mentors at the institution, had an impact on his early works.

Career

Jiří Georg Dokoupil started his career as a co-founder of the Mülheimer Freiheit group in 1979. Along with Hans Peter Adamski, Peter Bömmels and Walter Dahn, Dokoupil established the group which main goal was to find a new way of expression as an alternative to the restricted one of Minimal and Conceptual Art by merging brightly colored figurative painting with conventional subjects.

In 1980, the exhibition of the Mülheimer Freiheit took place at the Hahnentorburg, the Cologne headquarters of the Bundesverband Bildender Künstle. The event was attended by Bruno Bischofberger and a gallerist Paul Maenz who helped Dokoupil with the first solo show in 1982.

The "book painting" presented by Dokoupil that same year at the Documenta, Kassel, provided the artist with the first acclaim. Since then, Dokoupil has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Venice Biennale.

At the beginning of the next decade, Jiří Georg Dokoupil tried himself as an educator. In 1983, he was invited by the Academy of Fine Arts of Düsseldorf as a guest professor. He taught there for one year. In 1989, the artist served at Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain.

The constant experiments of Dokoupil with styles and techniques led to the invention of the method of Soot Paintings where soot of a burning candle or a flame of a torch were used as the media. Several series of works have been made in that technique, including the Subastas, Leopards, and "Christ" paintings. The Soot Paintings were followed by other unconventional works, like the soap bubble paintings, the tire paintings, the whip paintings, and the film paintings.

Jiří Georg Dokoupil has also tried his hand as an actor and co-producer collaborating in that capacities with Daryush Shokof.

Nowadays, Dokoupil shares his time between Berlin, Madrid, Prague, and Rio de Janeiro.

Achievements

• 

  Jiří Georg Dokoupil is considered one of the most unconventional modern artists.
  
  Eager to experiment, Dokoupil has about sixty series of works and more than one hundred elaborated techniques to his credit.
  
  His artworks can be found in both private collections and at such public art galleries as Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, the National Gallery in Berlin, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Centro Reina Sofia in Madrid and The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul among others.
  
  In 2007, 'Zigarette mit Streichhölzern (aus der Schnuller-Bilder Serie)' by Dokoupil was purchased at Phillips New York, Chelsea for $312,000.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Gelber Leopard

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • The first Cochin 'A' Leopard

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Jongleure

  • Gelber Leopard

  • Untitled

  • Goethestrasse 69

  • Jamaica Achate

  • Tady

  • Untitled

  • Girl in Whirlpool

  • Akt alt Santa Cruz

  • Brazil bubbles #6

  • Ultramarine Wall

  • Trakia I

  • Flores Sobre Una Mesa

  • Sin Pensar En La Muerte

  • Begegnung

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

Views

Jiří Georg Dokoupil prefers to keep independent from any determined style or technique. That’s why all his works can’t be easily identified by the audience. The expressivity and a passion for eroticism are the only marks of his authorship.

Quotations: "Duchamp scares me, I've been fighting with him all my life. He was the worst painter of all time."

Connections

colleague:

Hans Peter Adamski

colleague:

Peter Bömmels

colleague:

Walter Dahn