Rebecca Horn

L'Estel Ferit sculpture in Barcelona (2011)

Heidemarie Rebecca Horn (born March 24, 1944 in Michelstadt ) is a German sculptor, action artist and filmmaker. Her work often moves in the border area of different artistic disciplines and includes installations , performances , sculptural space installations , kinetic objects , poetic texts, film and drawing. Rebecca Horn is internationally recognized as one of the most prominent German artists.

Life

Childhood and youth

Rebecca Horn was born on March 24, 1944 as the daughter of a businessman and textile designer in Michelstadt, Hesse, in the Odenwald .

From an early age she dreamed of becoming an artist. She was inspired by her Romanian nanny, a painter who taught Rebecca to draw, as well as by her uncle, who was also an artist and led a varied life.

After a long stay at boarding school, Rebecca was supposed to study economics in order to take over her parents' textile factory, which had been in the family for several generations. But she broke off her studies after six months and began in 1963, initially without the knowledge of her parents, to study philosophy and art at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg .

Study time

The literary works Diary of a Thief by Jean Genet , Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel , Johann Valentin Andreaes Chymische Hochzeit des Christian Rosencreuz or the works of Franz Kafka and films by Luis Buñuel and Pier Paolo Pasolini were important for Horn .

In 1967 she began to make casts for a sculpture out of fiberglass and polyester resin ( glass fiber reinforced plastic ), but she was not warned about toxic fumes and asked to use a respirator, so Rebecca Horn and two other students suffered severe lung poisoning, which Horn spent a long time in hospital and spent a year in the sanatorium .

When she returned to university after the break, Rebecca Horn only used lighter and predominantly organic materials such as cotton, bandages and especially feathers.

Between 1968 and 1972 a number of actions and performances were created that were reserved for a small group of people. Her first project in 1968 was the arm extension, in which she explores the balance between people and space.

In 1969 Rebecca Horn finished her studies at the Hamburg Art Academy. A one-year DAAD scholarship at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design made it possible to study in London .

Artist career

Since the beginning of the 1970s, Rebecca Horn has been putting together a work of sculptural environments , installations and drawings with video and performance and photo overpainting.

In 1972 her work was exhibited for the first time at Documenta 5 under the direction of Harald Szeemann . Fluxus and happening art, which did not appear at the 4th documenta , were found among others. a. their place here. Non-art and image contributions from psychiatry were exhibited and publicly discussed controversially. She was the youngest artist in the exhibition.

In the same year Rebecca moved to New York , to SoHo , a district of Manhattan that was increasingly used by young artists and freelancers in the course of the 1960s. This is where the protagonists of the Fluxus and experimental film scenes met to hold their get-togethers with poetry readings, happenings , performance art, etc. in shabby and empty factory floors. She spent almost ten years between Berlin and New York .

In 1984 she was represented at the group exhibition From Here - Two Months of New German Art in Düsseldorf . In 1993, Horn was the first woman to have a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York .

In 1987 she redesigned the Zwinger in Münster as part of the Sculpture Projects into a memorial against Nazi violence.

She worked with the Arte Povera artist Jannis Kounellis and made several film projects, including the feature films La Ferdinanda: Sonata for a Medici Villa with the actors Valentina Cortese , Richard Sutherland and Hans Peter Hallwachs, and Buster's Bedroom (1990) after the Screenplay by Martin Mosebach with the actors Donald Sutherland , Geraldine Chaplin and Martin Wuttke , who received the German Film Prize in 1992 for being set by Nana von Hugo .

Horn exhibited several times at the Documenta in Kassel and was awarded important art prizes. In 1992 she became the first woman to be awarded the Imperial Ring of Goslar . Rebecca Horn has been a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin since 1993 . Her installation The Three Graces in the three skylights of the Bundesrat's foyer has been part of the artistic redesign of the former Prussian mansion since the institution's move and the reopening of the building in September 2000 .

Filmography

1970: unicorn . Super 8 mm,
1971: Black horns . Super 8 mm,
1972: Performances 1 , 22 min
1973: Performances 2 , 45 min
1974–75: Berlin, exercises in nine pieces , 16 mm
1975: Widow of Paradise , 16 mm
1976: The Chinese fiancee , 16 mm
1978: The dancer , 16 mm, 45 min
1981: La Ferdinanda - Sonata for a Medici Villa, Artimino , 35 mm, 90 min
1990: Busters Bedroom , 35 mm, 104 minutes

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions (selection)

1973: Rebecca Horn - Body Space , René Block Gallery, Berlin
1974: Rebecca Horn - Dreaming Under Water , René Block Gallery, New York
1979: Rebecca Horn - Dialogue Between Two Swings , Galleria Salvatore Ala, Milan
1981: Rebecca Horn - La Ferdinanda - Sonata for a Medici Villa , Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden
1993: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum , New York
1994: Neue Nationalgalerie , Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
1994: Retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York
1995: Festival d 'Automne à Paris , Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtière, Paris
1997: kestnergesellschaft , Hanover
2001: The Santiago de Compostela project - Rebecca Horn and students , Haus am Lützowplatz , Berlin
2002: Sean Kelly Gallery , New York
2003: Tate Gallery Liverpool / "Rebecca Horn - Dancing Canvases", Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin
2005: Rebecca Horn - Drawings , Exhibition Center, Centro Cultural de Belém , Lisbon
2006: Rebecca Horn - Retrospective , Martin-Gropius-Bau , Berlin
2007: Exhibition at the Museum Wiesbaden on the occasion of the handover of the Alexej von Jawlensky Prize of the state capital Wiesbaden at the end of 2007
2008: Rebecca Horn. Love - Hate , Salzburg, Museum der Moderne Rupertinum (June 21 - September 21)
2012: Rebecca Horn - Feathers dance on the shoulders , Weserburg Museum of Modern Art , Bremen (March 16 - July 1)
2015: Rebecca Horn - Black Moon Mirror , Galerie Thomas Modern, Munich ; with the installations Concert of Sighs (conceived for the 1997 Biennale) and Singing of Light (2005), the kinetic work The branch centered in the solar plexus, and poems
2017/18: Rebecca Horn - breath bodies as a life cycle , Lehmbruck Museum , Duisburg
2018: Rebecca Horn - Glowing Core , St. Hedwig's Cathedral , Berlin
2019: Rebecca Horn. Body fantasies. Museum Tinguely , Basel, June 5 to September 22, 2019
2019/20: Rebecca Horn. Theater of Metamorphoses. Center Pompidou-Metz , June 8, 2019 to January 13, 2020

Group exhibitions (selection)

1972 - Documenta 5 in Kassel in the Individual Mythologies Department : Self-Presentation - Exhibits
1977 - Documenta 6 in Kassel
1982 - Documenta 7 in Kassel
1984 - From here - Two months of new German art in Düsseldorf
1990 - The finiteness of freedom in Berlin
1992 - Documenta IX in Kassel

Retrospectives

1993: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The exhibition then traveled to the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; National Gallery, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wien; Tate Gallery and Serpentine Gallery, London and the Musée de Grenoble.
2006: Rebecca Horn - Retrospective , Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin

Publications

The spinal oracle. Texts by Rebecca Horn, afterword by Joachim Sartorius. Hatje Cantz Verlag 2014, ISBN 978-3-7757-3888-0

Prizes and awards

1975: German Critics' Prize for the film Berlin Exercises: Dreaming Under Water
1977: Art Prize of the Glockengasse, Cologne
1979: Art Prize of Böttcherstraße in Bremen
1986: Arnold Bode Prize from Documenta , Kassel
1988: Carnegie Prize for The Hydra Forest, Performing Oscar Wilde , Pittsburgh
1992: Kaiserring of the city of Goslar
1992: Karlsruhe Media Art Prize
1992: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
1993: Art Prize of the City of Darmstadt
1994: Berlin Bear (BZ Culture Prize)
2004: The Barnett and Annalee Newman Award, New York
2005: Hans Molfenter Prize , Stuttgart
2006: Piepenbrock Prize for Sculpture
2007: Alexej von Jawlensky Prize of the City of Wiesbaden
2009: Alice Salomon Poetics Prize 2009
2010: Hessian Culture Prize
2010: Praemium Imperiale , Tokyo
2012: Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art
2016: Pour le Mérite for Science and the Arts
2017: Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize
2019: Large Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

literature

Thomas Deecke : Rebecca Horn - Sleeping under the waters ... In: Artists - Critical Lexicon of Contemporary Art , Munich 1988
Bodylandscapes - body landscapes. English edition ISBN 3-7757-1470-7
Moon mirror. Location-based installations 1982-2005. ISBN 3-7757-9197-3
You 771 - Rebecca Horn. In the twilight of the senses. ISBN 3-03-717029-8
The kennel in Münster. ISBN 3-88375-647-4
Concert for Buchenwald. ISBN 3-908247-20-9
Body landscapes. ISBN 3-7757-1469-3
10 works / 20 postcards. ISBN 3-935567-25-1
Bodylandscapes. Drawings, sculptures, installations 1964–2004 . With contributions by Armin Zwei , Katharina Schmidt, Doris van Drathen, Annette Kruszynski and a conversation between Rebecca Horn and Joachim Sartorius as well as poems by Rebecca Horn, K 20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern o. J.
Georg Franzen: Psychic energies of fine art. A psychodynamic-phenomenological approach using the example of the work of Rebecca Horn. In: Georg Franzen (Hrsg.): Art and mental health. Medizinisch Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-939069-96-6 , pp. 57–68.