Jörg Immendorff
1945 - 2007
Born in Bleckede (DE), died in Düsseldorf (DE).
During the 1960s Jörg Immendorff studies at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. After finishing his set design studies, he went on to focus on the visual arts and is taught by Joseph Beuys. Immendorff gets involved in extra-parliamentary politics during his studies and after organising a number of provocative actions he is expelled from the academy.
From the very beginning Immendorff has been painting figurative and socially critical paintings. His contemporary historical paintings exhibit a close relationship to the Neue Wilde. In the early 1970s several German artists, including A. R. Penck, Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz and Jörg Immendorff gain attention by their expressive style of painting. The Neue Wilde express their dissatisfaction about the social structures on large canvases.
Immendorff is also known for his sixteen-part series, Café Deutschland. In this series Immendorff critiques the Berlin Wall and the capitalist and communist ideologies that led to the separation of East and West Germany.