Jörg Immendorff

Jörg Immendorff was a German painter, sculptor, stage designer and art professor. He was a member of the art movement Neue Wilde.

Work
Jörg Immendorff often worked in "grand cycles of paintings" that often lasted years at a time and were political in nature. Notable cycles include LIDL, Maoist Paintings, Cafè Deutschland, and The Rake's Progress.

LIDL
The first body of work that Immendorff gave a name to were his LIDL paintings, sculptures, performances, and documents, that he executed during 1968-1970. The name, "LIDL" was inspired by the sound of a child's rattle makes and much of his work from this period included the iconography of new beginnings and innocence. LIDL is comparable to Dadaist but unlike the Dadist movement it never became an established group but rather consisted of a variety of artists (including James Lee Byars, Marcel Broodthaers, Nam June Paik, and Joseph Beuys) participating in actions and activities. The art-historian Pamela Kort wrote this of Immendorf's LIDL works:

"LIDL ridiculed elitist art traditions, the cult of creative 'genius', and the precious aesthetic object. The artist countered these hierarchies by assembling a body of pretentious iconographic motifs drawn from the make-believe world of the child - turtles, dogs, goldfish, playhouses, and polar bears - which he transformed into the 'working material' of what he hoped would be a new functional art form."

In January 1968 he appeared in front of the West German Parliament in Bonn with a wood block labeled "Lidl" tethered to his ankle and painted in the colors of the German flag; he was subsequently arrested for defaming the flag.

Café Deutschland
Best known is his Café Deutschland series of sixteen large paintings (1977-1984) that were inspired by Renato Guttuso's Caffè Greco; in these crowded colorful pictures, Immendorff had disco-goers symbolize the conflict between East and West Germany. Since the 1970s, he worked closely with the painter A. R. Penck from Dresden (in East Germany). Immendorff was a member of the German art movement Neue Wilde.

Other activities
Immendorff created several stage designs, including two for the Salzburg Festival. He designed sets for the operas Elektra and The Rake's Progress. The latter also inspired a series of paintings in which he cast himself as the rake.

In 1984, Immendorff opened the bar La Paloma near the Reeperbahn in Hamburg St. Pauli and created a large bronze sculpture of Hans Albers there. He also contributed to the design of André Heller's avant-garde amusement park "Luna, Luna" in 1987. For three months, from 1987 until 1988, Immendorff was the foreign artist in residence at the Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand, attracting a lot of attention in the local scene there.

Immendorff created various sculptures; one spectacular example is a 25 m tall iron sculpture in the form of an oak tree trunk, erected in Riesa in 1999.

In 2006, Immendorff selected 25 of his paintings for an illustrated Bible. In the foreword he described his belief in God.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2024