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Georg Herold

Georg Herold - Artists - Petzel Gallery

Georg Herold was born in Jena, Germany in 1947 and now lives and works in Cologne. Rejecting traditional materials, he creates sculptures, assemblages, and paintings using bricks, baking powder, wooden roofing slats, vodka bottles, buttons, mattresses, and caviar. His work engages with socio-cultural issues and art history yet purposefully avoids a simple reading. Herold has said of his practice: “I intend to reach a state that is ambiguous and allows all sorts of interpretations.” 

In the mid-to-late 1970s, he attended the Academy of Fine Art in Munich and at the Academy of Fine Art in Hamburg. He studied under Sigmar Polke in Hamburg and, while there, became friends and collaborators with Werner Büttner, Martin Kippenberger, and Albert Oehlen, among others. He has held a professorship at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf since 1999.

Herold has had one-person exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Dallas Musuem of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Kunsthalle Zürich; Kunstverein in Hamburg; Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium, among others.

He has participated in Documenta, Kassel, Germany and Skulpturenpark Köln, Cologne. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Kunstverein Bonn; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Museé d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; Museum of Modern Art, New York; New Museum, New York; Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, among others.

Udo and Anette Brandhorst came to appreciate and collect Georg Herold’s work in the 1980s and the collection of the Museum Brandhorst in Munich now boasts over fifty works by the artist. Herold’s pieces are also included in the collections of the Bundeskunstsammlung, Germany; Dallas Museum of Art; Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Hall Art Foundation, Reading, Vermont and Derneburg, Germany; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium; Sammlung Viehof, Mönchengladbach, Germany; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Städel Museum, Frankfurt; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; and Tate Collection, London, among others.

As a matter of principle, I never use materials that speak their own language. That’s why I pick on rough, stupid materials that don’t ask questions.

–Georg Herold