Ben Willikens

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Ben Willikens

Ben Willikens (born June 21, 1939 in Leipzig ) is a German painter . He is known for his strictly composed, gray-colored room concepts. Since 1985 he has also designed sets for various German opera houses.

Life

Willikens' parents left the Soviet occupation zone in 1947 and settled in West Germany. After graduating from high school in Hannoversch Münden in 1959 , he began to study philosophy and literature in Hamburg . In 1962 he moved to the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart , where he studied painting with Heinz Tröke . After that, scholarships took him to London, among others.

In 1969 an illness forced him to stay in the clinic for almost a year. Willikens processed this event after scholarship stays at the Villa Romana in Florence and the Villa Massimo in Rome in a series of acrylic paintings in which he depicts stretchers, empty corridors and similar motifs in cool, anonymous language that have strong associations with institutions or hospitals wake up. This work immediately made him known. Numerous exhibitions in Germany and Italy followed.

A highlight of his work is the Lord's Supper is from 1977, in which he gave the room the world-famous fresco-secco of Leonardo da Vinci emptied of all persons present. His pictures developed more and more into depictions of ideal spaces devoid of people. In the 1990s, series such as the rooms of modernity , places , the cuts and the counter spaces were created .

In 1977 he was offered a professorship for painting at the College of Design in Pforzheim and in 1982 for a professorship for painting and graphics at the University of Fine Arts in Braunschweig . In 1991 he moved to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , where he initially held the chair for painting and graphics and from 1999 to 2004 as its rector.

Ben Willikens is a member of the German Association of Artists . Between 1970 and 1991 he took part in a total of 15 annual exhibitions - from 1980 he was a member of the DKB board for two years. Willikens lives and works in Stuttgart and Wallhausen (Hohenlohe).

Solo exhibitions (selection)

Stage sets (selection)

Awards

Work example

Wikiversity: Room 85 (1997)  - Course Materials

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Members "W" / Ben Willikens (accessed on March 7, 2017)
  2. ↑ s. Art report: nineteen hundred three | nineteen ninety-five. An overview of the German Artists Association , special edition Winter 1994/95, Bonn 1995. ISBN 3-929283-08-5 (p. 135)
personal data
SURNAME Willikens, Ben
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Willikens, Günther Eberhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig