Dieter Appelt

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dieter Appelt (born March 3, 1935 in Niemegk ) is a German photographer , painter , sculptor , video , action and object artist .

life and work

Appelt initially studied music and singing at the State University of Music - Mendelssohn Academy in Leipzig from 1954 to 1958 and later moved to the East Berlin German University of Music . During his studies he devoted himself to the composition of Arnold Schönberg , Anton Webern , Alban Berg and Leoš Janáček . In 1959 he moved to West Berlin and studied photography and experimental photography at the Hochschule der Künste with Heinz Hajek-Halke until 1964 .

He completed his vocal studies with a diploma in 1961 and from then on appeared regularly as a singer in the choir of the Deutsche Oper Berlin . In the following years he worked as a photographer, painter and sculptor. A guest tour with the ensemble of the opera took him to Japan in 1970, where he participated in the performance of Schönberg's opera Moses und Aron . Appelt stayed in Japan for a total of four months, visiting Tokyo , Osaka , Kyoto and Nara . In 1974 he had his first art exhibition in the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he was a singer until 1979. Only since then did he devote himself exclusively to the visual arts.

During a stay on the northern Italian island of Monte Isola in 1976 he took his first photographs in which Appelt dealt with his own body. To do this, he had smeared his limbs and head with plaster of paris and clay and wrapped them with gauze bandages. From then on he concentrated on photographic work, which he only produced in black and white with a plate camera . In the late 1970s and early 1980s, his actions and stagings in front of the camera mostly focused on his clothed or naked body, whereby he repeatedly dealt with the subjects of self-reflection, birth and death. Examples of his works from these years are photographs, for which he built structures from branches and positioned himself within this construction for photography.

Various work trips took him to France, Italy and Mexico in 1981. Further stays in Italy followed between 1983 and 1987 and in the 1990s when he also visited the United States and Canada. In 1982 he was appointed professor for film, video and photography at the Berlin University of the Arts. From 1996 he was vice dean of the fine arts department and later became vice president of the university. From the mid-1980s onwards, Appelt turned to new techniques and his work has been of a much more abstract character since then. For example, he shot horizontally rotating objects repeatedly with the same film, so that a fictitious sculptural object appeared in the photo. From 1988 to 1990 he curated the exhibition Between Black and White for the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein .

Outside of Berlin, Appelt only became known nationwide through its international success. In 1990 he was invited to the Venice Biennale for the first time . The Art Institute of Chicago dedicated a large retrospective to him in 1994, which was subsequently shown in Québec , New York , New Orleans and Berlin. He was invited again to the Venice Biennale in 1999, showing not only photographs but also installations and a video work.

Dieter Appelt lives and works in Berlin. He is a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts , the Karl Hofer Society and was temporarily its chairman. He was also a member of the expert commission of the Museum of Photography in Berlin.

Works by Dieter Appelt can be found in the Berlinische Galerie , the Nationalgalerie (Berlin) , The Walther Collection in Neu-Ulm , the Sinclair-Haus in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe and the Saarland Museum in Saarbrücken . Abroad, for example, the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge (Massachusetts) , the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona , the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg , the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent .

Dieter Appelt was a member of the German Association of Artists .

Solo exhibitions (selection)

Awards

literature

  • Walter Aue: Dieter Appelt, photo sequences, performance, objects, films . Vogt, Berlin 1981.
  • Michel Tournier: Morts et resurrections de Dieter Appelt . Herscher, Paris 1981.
  • Helmut Friedel: Dieter Appelt, Pitigliano 1982 . Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-88645-023-6 .
  • Michel Frizot: Dieter Appelt . Center National de la Photographie, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-86754-083-6 .
  • Sylvia Wolf, Wieland Schmied: Dieter Appelt . Exhibition catalog Art Institute of Chicago. Ars Nicolai, Chicago 1994, ISBN 0-86559-132-6 . German at Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 1996, ISBN 3-89322-899-3 .
  • Stefanie Heckmann: memory of the idea, Dieter Appelt . University of the Arts, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89462-050-1 .
  • Dieter Appelt: Dieter Appelt, Time and Self . Exhibition catalog Saarlandmuseum Saarbrücken. König, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-88375-432-3 .
  • Hubertus von Amelunxen: Dieter Appelt, Forth Bridge-cinema, metric space . Lars Müller Publishers, Baden 2005, ISBN 3-03-778048-7 .

Web links

Commons : Dieter Appelt  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members from 1903. In: kuenstlerbund.de. Deutscher Künstlerbund eV, accessed on August 17, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Appelt, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photo artist, painter, sculptor, video, action and object artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Niemegk