Jürgen Claus

Jürgen Claus (1953-2023) was one of the defining figures of the German media art scene from the 1960s onwards. From 1967 he developed an environmental art practice and became particularly known for his avant-garde underwater art performances.
From 1969 to 1972, Claus was an artistic collaborator at the Summer Olympics in Munich. From 1991 to 2000 he taught as Professor of Media Art at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne. In 2011 he was a fellow at the ZKM.
Claus lived and worked in Aachen and Baelen (Belgium), where he co-directed the Centre Overoth with his wife Nora from 1989 onwards, focusing on Biospheric Art.

The archive of Jürgen Claus was donated to the ZKM in 2021. It comprises approx. 11 meters of archival documents, plus about 90 video and audio tapes. Claus is considered a pioneer of environmental media art and one of its most important representatives since the 1960s. The sea, water, sun and light are recurring motifs and settings in his works, which are realized as collages, paintings, sculptures, films and photographs. Numerous documents, typescripts and manuscripts, correspondences sketches, photographs and ephemera available in the estate allow a comprehensive look into Jürgen Claus' artistic and theoretical production. The documents and collections, some not made by Jürgen Claus himself, form the context of his own activities. The correspondence, photographs, publications and ephemera serve as a research basis and references to contextualize Claus' projects and to be able to deal with his work in a penetrating way.