Rotraut (artist)

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Rotraut (born November 27, 1938 in Rerik , Mecklenburg ), née Rotraut Uecker , actually Rotraut Klein-Moquay , is a German-French artist. She is the sister of Günther Uecker and the widow of Yves Klein .

life and work

Rotraut Uecker left the GDR at the age of 17 with the help of her older brother Günther , who brought her from Groß Schwansee to Düsseldorf in 1955 , where he lived and worked.

In the summer of 1957, Rotraut Uecker lived with her friend, the Belgian Elena Palumbo-Mosca, in the house of the artist Arman in Nice , where she worked as an au pair . It was there that Yves Klein met the two young women. Rotraut had seen Klein's monochrome work for the first time at the “Yves, Propositions monochromes” exhibition that opened on May 31, 1957 in the Schmela Gallery in Düsseldorf . In the following years she became Yves Klein's partner and closest collaborator in his actions. Elena became an important model in making his anthropometrics .

Rotraut exhibited his own works, material reliefs and prints for the first time in 1959 in a gallery in London. From 1960, following Yves Klein, she devoted herself to footprints and other body slimming . In addition to works on the basis of plaster of paris and glue, Rotraut also made ceramic sculptures and used materials such as marble, metal, wood, stone, bronze, steel and plastic in her work. In April 1961, Rotraut and Yves flew to New York for Klein's Le Monochrome exhibition at Leo Castelli's and stayed at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan for two months .

On January 21, 1962, Rotraut Uecker and Yves Klein married in Paris . At the request of Yves Klein, who had patented an ultramarine blue he had created as “International Klein Blue (IKB)” in May 1960, the bride wore a blue tiara and a blue cocktail was served at the reception. He himself "[...] appeared in the costume of a knight of St. Sebastian with a cape and plumed hat." The bridal couple moved in to the sounds of a version of his symphony Monoton Silence, which had been revised by Klein . On the wedding day, the couple did not have much time to themselves, because on the same day Rotraut accompanied her husband to the Musée d'Art Moderne , where he performed in a room with Niki de Saint Phalle , Jacques de la Villeglé and François Dufrêne removed the works on display to create a space of emptiness .

Klein died just a few months after the wedding on June 6 of the same year at the age of 34. Their son, Yves Armand Marie, was born on August 6, 1962 and later known as an artist under the name of Yves Amu Klein .

In 1968 Rotraut married the photographer and designer Daniel Moquay, with whom she had three children and went to the United States in 1982 . Rotraut now lives and works in Phoenix (Arizona) .

Exhibitions

literature

  • Rotraut, Sculptures monumentales. Texts by Jacques Bouzerand, Jean-Michel Ribettes and Michael Stroeber, éditions Charles Moreau, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-9094-5848-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Manfred Rohde: Günther Uecker and Rotraut Klein-Moquay. Two world-class artists and their youth in Groß Schwansee . In: Moin! Magazine for art and culture in Northwest Mecklenburg, issue 1/2019, pp. 68–71, here p. 70.
  2. ↑ Elena Palumbo-Mosca: If you ask me ... . In: Oliver Berggruen, Max Hollein, Ingrid Pfeiffer (eds.): Yves Klein , Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt am Main, HatjeCantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, ISBN 3-7757-1446-4 , p. 118.
  3. ↑ Oliver Berggruen, Max Hollein, Ingrid Pfeiffer (eds.): Yves Klein , Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt am Main, p. 223 f.
  4. ↑ Quoted from Yves Klein Archives
  5. ↑ Oliver Berggruen, Max Hollein, Ingrid Pfeiffer (eds.): Yves Klein, Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt am Main, p. 224.
personal data
SURNAME Rotraut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Uecker, Rotraut (maiden name); Klein-Moquay, Rotraut (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-French artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Rerik