Dieter Koepplin

Dieter Koepplin (* 1936 in Basel ) is a Swiss art historian and museum curator. For many years he was head of the Kupferstichkabinett at the Basel Public Art Collection .

Life

Koepplin studied art history primarily at the University of Basel . He received his doctorate in 1964 with Joseph Gantner on a topic on Lucas Cranach . From 1964 to 1966 he was a research assistant in the Kupferstichkabinett of the Basel Public Art Collection .

In December 1966 Koepplin was appointed curator of the Kupferstichkabinett of the Basel Public Art Collection. From May 1991 to September 1992 - until Katharina Schmidt took office - he was interim director of the art museum and the museum for contemporary art in Basel . In 1999 Koepplin retired. In the same year he became an honorary professor at the Art History Institute of the University of Freiburg im Breisgau .

During his time as head of the Kupferstichkabinett, he mainly expanded the holdings of modern art - funded by the then director of the museum, Franz Meyer . In 1970 he showed over 120 drawings by Georg Baselitz at the Kunstmuseum Basel and initiated the first acquisitions for the collection. Among other things, he published studies on the graphic work of Joseph Beuys . In 1974, together with Tilman Falk, he organized a comprehensive exhibition Lucas Cranach: Paintings, Drawings, Prints at the Kunstmuseum Basel, which was accompanied by an extensive two-volume publication.

Fonts

Koepplin published publications on German art in the age of humanism and Reformation, as well as on the art of the 20th century.

• with Tilman Falk : Lukas Cranach. Paintings, drawings, prints . Birkhäuser, Basel / Stutgartt 1974 ( digitized volume 1 , volume 2 ).
• with Reinhold Hohl : Alberto Giacometti : drawings and prints. Hatje Cantz, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-7757-0161-3 .
• Heiner Bastian (Ed.): Joseph Beuys: The secret block for a secret person in Ireland. Schirmer-Mosel, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-88814-265-2 .
• with Marc Francis: Andy Warhol : Drawings 1942–1987. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich et al. 1998, ISBN 3-88814-379-9 . (English edition 1999).

as editor

• Heribert Schulz: Joseph Beuys and the swan. Richter & Fey Verlag, Düsseldorf 2012, ISBN 978-3-941263-39-0 .

For the public art collection in Basel he was the editor or author of catalogs for monographic exhibitions, among others by Horst Antes (1967), Kubismus (1969), Eduardo Chillida (1969), Joseph Beuys (1969, 1977, 1987, 1993), Georg Baselitz ( 1970, 1984, 1993), Andre Thomkins (1971, 1977), A. Wölfli (1971), Remy Zaugg (1972), Claes Oldenburg (1974, 1992), Donald Judd (1976), AR Penck (1978, 1986), Jörg Immendorf (1979), Mimo Paladino (1981), Jonathan Borofsky (1983), Bruce Nauman (1986), Francesco Clemente (1987, 1991), Alberto Giacometti (1981), Rosemarie Trockel (1991), Rebecka Horn (1995), James Ensor (1996), Andy Warhol (1998).

He wrote about thematic exhibitions:

• Sketches (Basel 1988 / Kunsthalle Bielefeld 1989)
• Drawn to the end - pictorial drawings from the time of Dürer and Holbein to the present day (1995, cat. Westfälisches Landesmuseum Münster / Hatje Verlag Stuttgart), watercolors (1996)
• Early works from Dürer to the present day (1999)

Web links

• Literature by and about Dieter Koepplin in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website University of Freiburg (biography)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cranach's marriage portrait of Johannes Cuspinian from 1502. Its Christian-humanistic significance. Dissertation 1964. Stehle, Düsseldorf 1973, DNB 570470463 .