Background
Lothar Baumgarten was born in 1944 in Rheinsberg, Germany.
- Photos
- Works
Main Photo
Lothar Baumgarten
- Photos
- Works
painting
Equator
Tetrahedron
Shaiprabowë
Land of the Spotted Eagle
How to see Venice
Metals
Red Cloud
Origin of Table Manners
Terra Incognita
Grundriß, pars pro toto V
Lothar Baumgarten
Edit ProfileEducation
Baumgarten attended the Staatlichen Akademie für bildende Künste, Karlsruhe in 1968 and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1969 to 1971, where he studied for a year under Joseph Beuys.
Career
Baumgarten's body of work has included ephemeral sculptures, photographic work, slide projection pieces, 16 mm film works, recordings, drawings, prints, books, short stories, as well as site-specific works and wall drawings and architecture related interventions.
Between 1968 and 1970, Baumgarten undertook a systematic photographic study of how several European ethnographic museums frame the viewer's perception through the manner in which their objects are displayed.
Since his first solo show at Galerie Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf in 1972, Baumgarten has exhibited widely internationally. Important solo shows included the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (1987); as well as Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1987); The National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto and Tokyo (1996); the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2001); and the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria. In 1984, he and A.R. Penck represented Germany at the Venice Biennale. He has also participated in documenta V (1972), VII (1982), IX (1992), and X (1997); the 1988 and 1991 Carnegie International; Skulptur Projekte Münster, 1987; and the 38th, 41st and 49th Venice Biennale (1978, 1984 and 2001).
Between 1977 and 1986 Baumgarten visited Brazil and Venezuela. During an eighteen-month period between 1978 and 1980, the artist lived among the Yãnomãmi people of Kashorawë-their and Nyapetawë-their in the upper Orinoco region. There were about 85 people in this particular community, which at that time had had relatively little contact with the outside world. Baumgarten's visits resulted in works such as "Terra Incognita" (1969-1984), a three-dimensional diagram of the frontier between the two countries. Besides, he represented Germany at the 1984 Venice Biennale.
In 1976 and 1989, he spent six months traveling the United States by rail and residing on several Indian reservations.
In the late 1990s, he was commissioned with an installation at the Bundespräsidialamt. In 2002, he received a commission for Seven Rings for Contemplation, a permanent public artwork for Denning's Point State Park in Beacon, New York.
Since 1994 Baumgarten has been Professor at the Berlin University of the Arts.
Achievements
-
Baumgarten's numerous awards have included the Prize of the City of Düsseldorf (1974); the Prize of the State of Nordrhein-Westfalen (1976); the Golden Lion, First Prize of the 41st Venice Biennale (1984); the Lichtwark Prize of the City of Hamburg, Germany (1997); and the MFI Prize, Essen (2003).
Baumgarten is represented by Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris.
His works are held in numerous museum collections, including the Tate; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Migros Museum, Zurich; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; De Pont museum, Tilburg and Vancouver Art Gallery.
Works
painting
Membership
In 2011, Lothar Baumgarten was a fellow at Villa Massimo, Rome.
