Thomas Bayrle

A pioneer of German Pop Art, Thomas Bayrle (b. 1937, Berlin, Germany) is a Frankfurt-based artist best known for his ‘super-forms’, large images composed of iterations of smaller cell-like images. Bayrle began his career as a designer and, after an apprenticeship within a textile factory, he became fascinated by mechanisation and its repetitive patterns and rhythms. From this experience, Bayrle’s work retained the motif of the human figure in the machine age and the structure of the grid. Influenced by pop art, and notably Sigmar Polke in Germany, the Frankfurt School, the economic post-war boom, and most importantly the large American presence in Frankfurt, Bayrle abandoned painting in 1967 to produce serigraphic works reflecting on mass society. Like fellow Frankfurt artist and friend Peter Roehr, Bayrle adopted serial repetition as a means to critically engage with mass consumerism.

Text © the artist and Deutsche Bank, 2018