Isa Genzkens Art Formation: Thorough and even more thorough, from more than one side

Isa Genzken grew up in the beautiful Schleswig-Holstein University of Fine Arts in Hamburg from 1969 to 1971 .

She studied painting (especially with Kai Sudeck and Almir Mavignier), also photography at Kilian Breier, visited as many of the trendy avant-garde exhibitions and also worked as a model for their maintenance.

Sudeck and Breier were among the experienced teachers who can open their eyes due to a variety of training (with art school in Paris) and their own contacts with the practical art exercise, with Almir Mavignier (Genzkens probably the most influential teacher at the HfBK Hamburg), the cosmopolitanity was added: Almir da Silva Mavignier was born in 1925 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1965/1968 worked as an art teacher and in his artist studio in Hamburg, where he still lives and works today.

He had studied painting in Rio de Janeiro with an avant -garde artist of the international art world: Árpád scenès (1897 - 1985), most important representative of the modern "École de Paris" , who in Paris 1925 to 1940 with Art Nouveau, Impressionism and Fauvism, abstract art , cubism and expressionism , dadonism and surrealism in Touch had come.

created abstract works of art around 1950 First to Paris, where he united Russian constructivism concrete art from 1952 Max Bill at the University of Design until 1958, only since the escape from the Nazis as a visiting professor from the USA.

Genzken-Teacher Mavignier discovered point images, raster structures, optical art and monochrome painting ; artist group "Zero" from 1958 and always worked as a graphic artist (more than 200 posters); founded his own studio in Ulm in 1959, organized and curated the exhibition "New Tendencies" in Zagreb in 1960/1961 until 1978; was invited to Documenta III and 1968 to Documenta 4 in 1964 and in 1965 received a professor of painting at the State University of Fine Arts in Hamburg - Watt a career!

In this world-experienced, internationally known artist with learning and teacher experiences in the art-styles, abstract painting, concrete art, op art and practical experience as a commercial graphic artist received right at the beginning of her artistic training. Which was obviously accepted by the northern countries that were already quite far around at the time:

Isa Genzken also moved on and learned, 1972 art history and philosophy at the University of Cologne, 1973 Photography and Graphics in Berlin and finally until 1977 at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. There she reached a premium degree, which is the prerequisite for being invited to visit a master class. She followed the call to the master class of Gerhard Richter and married June 1982 "her master"; In 1993 the couple separated, in 1994 the marriage was divorced again.

"most important German artist" for the rest of the world has recently been married to the most important German artist, even before she was finished with her training - that must mean something.

Experience has shown that such a special personal constellation will affect the expense of the female part, you should a look at the article "Isa Genzken: a remarkable history of outstanding exhibitions" Isa Genzken's art .

This could help to take a look at Isa Genzken and to shovel her work free, instead of perceiving the artist against the background of her long past "ex".

Isa Genzken already became a "teacher" when she was officially one of the "learners". From 1977 Genzken sculpture at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and teached design at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences in Krefeld , while studying art history at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

If master student Isa Genzken also started academically organized apprenticeship very early on, artists can often be observed that they begin to pass on their knowledge and skills to those who follow up to their own training promptly. People who attended a normal school (and then graduated from a refused profession to an uncritical socially compliant profession) are just as astonished.

If the art studies were among the few training courses that should not only/want to enter the teachers, but also use knowledge transfer to the formation of self -thinking critical people, this would not be surprising, but consistent: a person has been formed when he has learned to find and capture the facts relevant to a topic in order to develop questions from these facts through their own thinking.

Questions from the teacher to the student; But as well as questions from the teacher to the student - because the teacher also has to stay a student for a lifetime if his topic should not slip at some point.

For example, Genzken later never lost contact with questions of questions, e.g. B. 1990 in a one -year visiting professorship for sculpture at the University of the Arts in Berlin or in 1991 in their one -year teaching at the Städelschule in Frankfurt , great sculpture.

Nasher Prize 2019: Isa Genzken

Nasher curators and Quin Matthew's films travel to Isa Genzkens Studio in Berlin to talk about their love for big cities, architecture, people as sculptures and other topics in their work:

Keywords: academic art education, art and the global world, master student Isa Genzken, students and teachers in art