Rudolf Zwirner

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Rudolf Zwirner (born July 28, 1933 in Berlin ) is a German art dealer , gallery owner and exhibition curator. The Zwirner gallery, which he directed , was one of the leading galleries for contemporary art in Europe from the 1970s to 1990s.

Career

Zwirner grew up in Braunschweig as the son of the phonetician Eberhard Zwirner . His brother is the physician Ruprecht Zwirner . After graduating from high school in 1954, he began studying law and art history at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg , which he broke off in 1956 to volunteer at Hein Stünke's gallery Der Spiegel in Cologne . The occasion was the previous visit to documenta 1 , which impressed him very much and "converted" him to modern art. Stünke was known to him through his father from the time of National Socialism . From 1957 he worked in the modern department of Gerd Rosen's auction house in Berlin. In 1958 he went to Paris and worked for Heinz Berggruen's gallery . In 1959 he was appointed general secretary of documenta 2 in Kassel by Arnold Bode , a position "... which opened up the international art world for him."

Act

In 1959, Zwirner opened his first gallery in Essen's Kahrstraße not far from the Folkwang Museum , together with his first wife, Ursula Reppin, a trained artist and graphic expert. He showed, among other exhibitions, works by the artists Karel Appel , Konrad Klapheck , Jesús Rafael Soto and Takis (1961) and Cy Twombly . After these first beginnings as a gallery in Essen in 1962 moved Zwirner to Cologne and opened in Kolumba churchyard new gallery spaces in which Joseph Beuys made in 1963 his first action with grease. In 1964, Zwirner moved the gallery to Albertusstrasse 16 in Cologne. In 1965 he showed René Magritte's first solo exhibition in Germany.

In 1966 he and Hein Stünke founded the Association of Progressive German Art Dealers in order to be able to negotiate with the city of Cologne on an institutional level about a fair for modern art in Cologne. In the same year he co-founded the Cologne art market , which opened in September 1967 in the great hall of the Gürzenich . It was the first event of its kind, the first Art Basel followed in 1969, and in 1973 the Fiac took place in Paris for the first time. In 1970 Zwirner caused a sensation when he bought a work by Roy Lichtenstein for 75,000 US dollars. The art market in Cologne became today's Art Cologne through mergers since 1984 .

In 1972, Zwirner had the Cologne architect Erich Schneider-Wessling built a residential and gallery house at Albertusstrasse 18, whose loft-like design was adapted to the new needs of the gallery. In 1973, Zwirner became a founding member of the European Art Dealers Association, which had emerged from the Association of Progressive German Art Dealers, and took over the management of the secretariat until 1975. His first important collectors were Wolfgang Hahn and Peter and Irene Ludwig . In 1992 Zwirner withdrew from the active gallery business. In 1991 he was co-founder and head of the central archive of the international art trade in Bonn. In 1994 he became co-editor of the magazine sediment. In 1998 he curated the major exhibition Germany Pictures with Eckhart Gillen in the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin .

Since 2000, Zwirner has been honorary professor for art education at the Braunschweig University of Fine Arts . In 2006 he received the Art Cologne Prize. His son David Zwirner has been running one of the most influential galleries in New York since 1993 . Zwirner lives with his wife, the art historian Dorothea Zwirner, in Berlin.

Fonts

  • Rudolf Zwirner (Red.): Contemporary art from private ownership in Cologne . Catalog for the exhibition at the Museum Ludwig, 1988.
  • Nicola Kuhn, Rudolf Zwirner: I always wanted the present . Wienand Verlag GmbH, Cologne 2019. ISBN 978-3-86832-529-4 .

literature

  • Around '67 - Rudolf Zwirner and the early years of the Cologne Art Market . Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 2006, ISBN 978-3-938821-98-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rosemarie Reichwein, Hans Bohnenkamp, ​​Ursula Schulz: Adolf Reichwein , Volume 2, G. Müller, 1974, p. 352.
  2. ^ Eduard Beaucamp : The aesthetics of withdrawal, in: sediment 12: Around '67 - Rudolf Zwirner and the early years of the art market in Cologne, Verlag für modern art Nuremberg, 2006, ISBN 978-3-938821-98-5 . P. 13.
  3. ^ Günter Herzog : Notes on Rudolf Zwirner , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on July 26, 2013
  4. ^ Günter Herzog : The Cologne Art Market '67 - From the Central Archive 22, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on October 23, 2003
  5. ^ History of the Zwirner Gallery at ZADIK , accessed on June 3, 2015
  6. ↑ Pictures of Germany at kunstaspekte.de
  7. ↑ Rudolf Zwirner receives this year's Art Cologne Prize ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : Art Cologne press release from August 3, 2006 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.art-in.de
  8. ↑ Moritz von Uslar : "Hipness is uninteresting in the long run" , in: Die Zeit , May 2, 2013
  9. ↑ Thomas Hüetlin : Limit uncertain , in: Der Spiegel from December 3, 2012
  10. ^ Berlin Art Scene with Dawin Meckel
  11. ↑ Author profile: Dorothea Zwirner ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at DuMont Buchverlag @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dumont-buchverlag.de
  12. ^ Brigitte Werneburg : Contract with letter box company , in: Die Tageszeitung , April 19, 2004
personal data
SURNAME Zwirner, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art dealer, art collector and curator
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin