Peter Benkert

Peter Benkert (born December 31, 1942 in Berlin ) is a German painter of geometric hard-edge abstraction. It can also be assigned to minimalism and serial art .

life and work

After graduating from high school, Benkert studied art at the Berlin University of the Arts (today: University of the Arts Berlin / UdK), eventually became a master student of Fred Thieler and a member of the self-help gallery of Berlin artists Großgörschen 35 . After completing his studies, he worked as an art teacher and worked for 25 years in the archive of the architectural museum of the Technical University of Berlin . From 1960 until today his works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions.

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The artist shows in his picturesque works abstract geometric lines and spaces of intense and varied colors are marked. At the end of the 1960s, his minimalist color steles, the so-called “Luschen”, achieved cult status , which show a triad of colors . In the 1970s his serial “stereotypes” and color space objects emerged. Since the 1980s he has devoted himself to autonomous painterly color series that are characterized by a chromatic , repetitive and spectral structure. At the same time, Benkert developed dynamic, unreal spatial constructions , also using the technique of painting . For several years now, the artist has devoted himself to so-called “space probes”. These are floating, multi-perspective and stereometric figures that neither seem to be subject to gravity nor have a horizon . Unreal illusionistic spatial depth, surprising light and color relationships as well as restless dynamics result in a tension between angular sharpness and stylish sophistication.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

• 1969: Foyer for international encounters, Gallery Poll , Berlin
• 1977: Galerie Richter, Berlin
• 1984: Galerie des Lichts, Berlin
• 2004: Gallery Poll , Berlin
• 2011: haw galleri, Aventoft
• 2012: rows and rooms. Peter Benkert on his 70th birthday , Gallery of the Kunststiftung Poll , Berlin

Group exhibitions (selection)

• 1964: Great Berlin art exhibition
• 1968: Retrospective Großgörschen 35 , Berlin and Wolfsburg
• 1969: First spring fair in Berlin galleries
• 1970: Large art exhibition, Neue Gruppe, Munich
• 1978: Articulation of space , Deutscher Künstlerbund , Nationalgalerie Berlin
• 1981: Concrete Constructive Art , Berlinische Galerie
• 1986: Utopias , BBK Berlin
• 1998: October 1968 , 30 years of Galerie Poll, Berlin
• 2008: Großgörschen 35 , 40 PLUS / MINUS , Gallery Poll, Berlin
• 2010: Minimalism Germany 1960’s , Daimler Art Collection , Haus Huth , Berlin
• 2013: The Sixties - Art and Culture of the 1960s in Germany , Gallery of the City of Sindelfingen

Literature about Peter Benkert

• Renate Wiehager: Minimalism and after: Tradition and tendencies of minimalist art from 1950 to today ; New acquisitions for the 2000 to 2006 collection / DaimlerChrysler Collection, Ostfildern 2007, ISBN 978-3-7757-1828-8 .
• Renate Wiehager (Ed.): Minimalism in Germany. The sixties ; Texts by Renate Wiehager and Susannah Cremer-Bermbach, Norbert Grob, Paul Kayser, Hans Mayer, Gregor Stemmrich, Franz Erhard Walther et.al., approx. 500 pages, 500 illustrations. Hatje Cantz 2012, ISBN 978-3-7757-3366-3 .
• Lothar C. Poll (Ed.): Peter Benkert. Rows and Spaces , Kunststiftung Poll , Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-931759-33-9 .

Web links

• Information about Peter Benkert at the Poll gallery
• Information on Peter Benkert at the Daimler Art Collection