Michael Werner (art dealer)

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Michael Werner (born May 8, 1939 in Nauen ) is a German art dealer and gallery owner.

Life

Michael Werner's first art teacher was Johannes Geccelli . He began in 1958 as an Adlatus for the art dealer Rudolf Springer in his gallery on Kurfürstendamm in Berlin . In 1963 he had an exhibition with works by Georg Baselitz in the “Galerie Katz und Werner” founded with Benjamin Katz , with which he introduced himself and the artist without this immediately being reflected in sales. Werner made sure that Baselitz's pictures The Big Night in a Bucket and The Naked Manwere scandalized by the press, so that the public prosecutor's office confiscated the works, the proceedings were then dropped. Werner later shared the apartment in Berlin with Daniel Schmid and ran a room gallery; Johannes Gachnang was a first customer . Until the early 1980s Werner, who had moved to Cologne in 1969, had to hold out with the German artists he represented Baselitz, AR Penck , Markus Lüpertz and Per Kirkeby as well as Jörg Immendorff , Antonius Höckelmann and Sigmar Polke with few sales, but Werner tried through pure insistence on his artists to make an impact on the art market. Only the internationalization of his contacts with the New York galleries Ileana Sonnabend , Pace Gallery , Xavier Fourcade and Marian Goodman and finally the participation in the gallery of his later life partner Mary Boone brought him recognition and sales. Boone and Werner married in 1984. They have one son and are divorced.

When the curators Manfred Schneckenburger and Evelyn Weiss prevented pictures of the GDR dissident AR Penck, represented by Werner, at documenta 6 because this would have disrupted the rapprochement with GDR cultural policy, Immendorf and Baselitz also withdrew their contributions and Gerhard Richter expressed their solidarity deal with them. Werner also exhibited Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) from 1985 . The latter was accused of working too closely together between the art dealer Werner and Siegfried Gohr , who was head of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne at the time . Gohr was then dismissed, he then worked in Düsseldorf as a university lecturer.

In 2009 Werner established himself in Märkisch Wilmersdorf near Berlin.

In 2011 he received the Art Cologne Prize for his services as an art mediator . In 2012 Werner bequeathed 127 objects to the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris , which its director Fabrice Hergott could freely choose from the gallery inventory. There were bundles of Penck, Immendorf, Lüpertz, Per Kirkeby and James Lee Byars , but also representatives of German classical modernism recently collected by Werner, such as Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Otto Freundlich .

Manor house in Märkisch Wilmersdorf

Artist

Artists currently or formerly represented by the art dealer Michael Werner:

literature

  • Daghild Barthels: Detour via exile . In: NZZ , September 29, 2012, p. 20.
  • Donatien Grau: Le dernier château. Sur la donation Michael Werner . Manuella Éditions, Paris 2012, ISBN 978-2-917217-33-7 .
  • Michael Werner: "This exhibition is a political exhibition". Conversation with Fabian Stech in the Kunstforum International, vol. 220. pp. 387–392.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Axel Hecht; Heinz Peter Schwerfel: Michael Werner  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Interview with Art , 5/1999@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.art-magazin.de  
  2. ↑ a b Birgit Maria Sturm: Michael Werner , Interview with Artnet , May 20, 2011
  3. ↑ The fact is that the artists are withdrawing. The presentation of the causes by the documenta management differs from that of Werner, see also Spiegel Online of October 30, 2000
personal data
SURNAME Werner, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art dealer
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Nauen