Günter Haese. Sculptures

Opening Wednesday 10th April, 2019 at 7p.m.

After the Rain III, 1968, 24,5 x 37 x 32 cm. Brass and phosphorous bronze.

The exhibition presents a selection of sculptures by German artist Günter Haese (Kiel 1924 - Düsseldorf 2016) produced over the course of four decades. This is the third exhibition of the artist in the gallery.

Trained as an artist in the School of Düsseldorf during the fifties (where he studied with Bruno Goller, Ewald Mataré and Joseph Beuys), Haese applied watchmaking mechanisms to explore through movement and weight control the rules of balance. His work materializes a constant obsession to find the perfect balance and to reach the limit of stability. It responds not only constructively to this strong interest in material balance but was also determined by his studies on cybernetic theorems and the cellular structures. Titles of his works, like Sinus (1987), Soma (2000), or Il Principe (1962), show how these scientific fields of investigation influenced his artistic process.

Haese obsessively explored the forms in Nature and the way in which they connect with each other, developing a personal aesthetic universe that facilitated the process of their understanding. This deep curiosity allowed him to develop his artistic practice sailing amongst different fields of knowledge, looking to the sides instead of following one single direction.

In 1964 he was invited to Documenta III, Kassel, being the first German artist to be, in the same year, subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of New York. In 1966 he represented Germany at the Venice Biennale.

Biography

Günter Haese (Kiel 1924 - Düsseldorf 2016) is a german artist is a German artist who started drawing and painting as an autodidact. At the age of 26 he began studying at the Kunstacademie Düsseldorf under Bruno Goller and Edwald Mataré, with other artists like Joseph Beuys, Erwin Heerich, or Georg Meistermann.

He shortly enrolled Edwald Mataré’s sculpture Master Class and assisted with his works for the Cologne Cathedral. The professor took seriously his careful nature studies and oriented his talent towards sculpture. Inspired, he gradually abandoned his work with glass plates monotypes (on which he already engraved reticular motifs), finding materials for his new works while he dismantled a broken clock. From then on, he used pliers, tweezers and soldering irons to construct art from clockworks, balance wheels, brass mesh and copper wires.

In this way, he evolved towards more stable figures made with pieces from chronometers and started designing what he later defined as “more rhythmic and freer scenic events”.

In 1963 he sent to the Junger Westen Art Prize his first series of sculptures, relatively simple compared to later ones. Surprisingly fast, he expanded and defined, in the following years, the broad aesthetic vocabulary with which he operated since then.

In 1964 he had his first exhibition at Ulmer Museum, which attracted so much attention that in the same year he was invited to hold his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York - MOMA. He was also invited to participate in Documenta III, in Kassel, with artists like

Hans Arp, Francis Bacon, Max Bill, Constantin Brâncusi, Alexander Calder, Charles Eames, Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, and Egon Schiele among others.

In 1965 he had a solo exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art, London. Tate Modern purchased here the artworks After the Rain I.

In 1966 he represented Germany at the Venice Biennale.

In 1978 he received the Kunstpreis Schleswig-Holstein Prize, Germany.

In 1967 he received the Cornelius Prize in Dusseldorf and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Prize in New York.

In 1975 he exhibited at the National Library of Madrid, and three years later he received the prize Kunstpreis Schleswig-Holstein, in Germany.

During the eighties his carreer slowed down and went silence.

In the 90’s he started working from a studio he was offered in Cité des Arts, Paris.

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In 1994 he received an honorary professorship from the state of Schlesgig-Holstein, and in 1997 he became a member of Freie Academie der Künste in Hamburg.

In 1995 his first exhibition at Galería Elvira González took place, followed by a second one ten years later, in 2005.

In 2006 he made his first monumental sculpture for the Viersen Sculpture Collection. He died in 2016 in Düsseldorf.

He died in 2016 in Düsseldorf.

Works in public collections

Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington; Landesmuseum, Bonn; Quadrat, Bottrop, Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf; Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg; Museum, Karlsruhe; Kunsthalle, Kiel, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne; Tate Gallery, London; Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim; Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum, Recklinghausen; Abegg- Stiftung, Riggisberg bei Bern; Landesmuseum Schloß Gottorf, Schleswig; Museo de Arte Moderno, México.

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