Dieter Krieg
- Year of birth, place
- 1937, Lindau, Germany
- Year of death, place
- 2005, Quadrath-Ichendorf, Germany
- Role at the ZKM
- in the collection
- Biography
- Dieter Krieg was born in Lindau on Lake Constance in 1937. He studied (1958-68) at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe, under H.A.P. Grieshaber and Herbert Kitzel. He has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Deutscher Kunstpreis der Jugend: Malerei (1966) and the Internationale Kunstpreis awarded by the Austrian region of Vorarlberg (1989). He has held many teaching positions and has served as a guest lecturer at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe (1971-72) and at the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main (1975-76). Since 1978 he has been a professor at the Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf. He lives in Quadrath-Ichendorf.
Dieter Krieg initially worked in a tachiste manner; but, from the mid-1960s, he began to concentrate on painting the human figure as a variously seated, mostly headless torso. Thereafter, until the mid-1970s, Krieg's cycles and series of images were dominated by distinctly unspectacular everyday objects such as poles and pairs of trousers. Around 1975, however, colour entered the rather by black and white dominated paintings; and invented objects were added to the banal ones he had previously depicted. Krieg's painting technique - there would be a dense layering of pastose paint, applied with a spontaneously expressive brushstroke, and subsequently scratched and rubbed - draws attention to itself and so effectively becomes the subject of his work. This also bestowed an alien quality on the depicted and enlarged objects. In addition to his paintings in acrylic or oils, Krieg produced a great many works on paper, using pencil, charcoal, gouache and watercolour. From the mid-1970s he also started to incorporate texts into his images, some derived from everyday speech, others from literary sources. By 1993 such texts had become the dominant feature of his work. While sometimes apparently making sense, these texts are essentially without semantic import as used by Krieg. In his most recent work, Krieg has attempted to expand the technical range of his painting through experimentation with a new process: squeezing very pastose paint between a streched canvas and a pane of glass.
Individual exhibitions (selection)
1966 Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe
1967 Galerie Der Spiegel, Cologne
1970 Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart
1972 Kunsthalle Darmstadt
1973 Galerie Regio, Basle
1983 »Dieter Krieg: Bilder 1966-1983«, Von der Heydt-Museum, Kunst- und Museumsverein, Wuppertal, subsequently at Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe
1991 »Bilder 1986-1990«, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf; »Bilder - Grafik«, Marburger Universitätsmuseum für Bildende Kunst, Marburg
1991 »Dieter Krieg«, Gesellschaft der Freunde junger Kunst, Baden-Baden; »Bilder: Malerei auf Papier. Radierungen«, Manus Presse, Stuttgart
1992 »Neue Bilder«, Galerie Wolfgang Gmyrek, Düsseldorf
1993 »Neue graphische Arbeiten«, Gmyrek Graphik, Düsseldorf; »Ausstellung anlässlich der Verleihung des Hans-Thoma-Preises«, Hans-Thoma-Museum, Bernau
1994 Freundeskreis Wilhelmshöhe, Ettlingen; »Allen Malern herzlichen Dank«, Klanginstallation, Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen
1995 »Dieter Krieg: Bilder«, Kunstverein Eislingen; »Dieter Krieg: Fortuna, Knapsack, Hürth, Grevenbroich«, Galerie Wolfgang Gmyrek, Düsseldorf
1996 »Bilder, Bilder auf Papier, Radierungen«, Galerie Manus Presse, Stuttgart; »Zeichnungen«, LG Galerie, Landesgirokasse Stuttgart; »Vorhänge«, Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart; »Kontraste: Dieter Krieg, Linhard von Monkiewitsch, Timm Ulrichs«, Galerie Simon, Hannover; »Neue Arbeiten«, Kunstverein Augsburg, Toskanische Säulenhalle, Zeughaus Augsburg
1997 »Dieter Krieg: sun side up«, Galerie Simon, Orangerie, Hannover-Herrenhausen
Group exhibitions (selection)
1966 »Deutscher Kunstpreis der Jugend: Malerei«, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden
1967 »Wege 1967«, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund; »Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland«, Prague, subsequently at Brünn, Bratislava; 5. Biennale de Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
1969 »14 x 14«, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden
1970 »Jetzt: Künste in Deutschland heute«, Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, Cologne; »Die Handzeichnung der Gegenwart«, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; »3. Internationale der Zeichnung«, Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt
1971 São Paulo Bienal, São Paulo; 7. Biennale de Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
1975 »Contemporary German Art«, Melbourne
1977 documenta VI, Kassel
1978 Biennale di Venezia, Venice
1981 »Hartmann, Krieg, Kristiansen, Vogt«, Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal
1985 »German Art 1945-1985«, Taipei Fine Arts Museum Centre, Taipei
1988 »Refigured Painting. The German Image 1960-1988«, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo/Ohio, subsequently at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
1989 »Neue Figuration: Deutsche Malerei 1960-1988«, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, subsequently at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt/M; »Zeitzeichen. Stationen bildender Kunst in Nordrhein-Westfalen«, Ministerium für Bundesangelegenheiten des Landes NordrheinWestfalen, Bonn, subsequently at Museum der bildenden Künste und Galerie der Hochschule für Graphik und Buchkunst, Leipzig, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg
1990 »Der Deutsche Künstlerbund in Berlin 1990«, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
1995 »Deutsche Kunst nach 1945, Sammlung Murken«, Jesuitenkirche, Galerie der Stadt Aschaffenburg; »Auf Papier. Deutsche Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts aus der Deutschen Bank«, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt/M, subsequently at Berlinische Galerie, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Photographie und Architektur, Berlin, Museum für Bildende Künste, Leipzig; »Impuls Südwest. Kunst der 60er Jahre in Baden-Württemberg«, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe
1997 »Von den Dingen. Gegenstände in der zeitgenössischen Kunst«, Städtische Galerie Rähnitzgasse, Dresden
[Konstanze Thümmel, 1997]
