Markus Lüpertz

Markus Lüpertz (born in 1941 in Liberec, Bohemia, the current Czech Republic) studied at the Werkkunstschule Krefeld from 1956 to 1961 and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 1963 Markus Lüpertz embarked on the series of ‘dithyrambic’ paintings, his first independent and mature works. The ancient term ‘dithyramb’ refers to ecstatic songs and rituals honouring the god Dionysus and was used by the artist to describe a working state of excited improvisation and spontaneous invention, at a time when he was searching for new aesthetic forms in his painting.

Markus Lüpertz’s earliest ‘dithyrambic’ pictures were pictorial inventions of sculptural forms in planar space that lie somewhere between abstract and representational imagery: forms evocative of architecture or figuration, though not always overtly so. The artist later augmented his practice of inventing forms by seeking new motifs from a variety of unlikely and banal sources, and in 1965 began the series of paintings depicting tents and tent-like forms. Taken from illustrations in a department store catalogue, the motif of the tent offered Markus Lüpertz a way to further develop his ideas of abstraction and pictorial invention through theme and variation.

Head of Athene is one of a group of hand-painted bronzes depicting subjects from Greek mythology. Bronze sculptures form a significant part of Markus Lüpertz’s oeuvre since the late 1970s.

Lüpertz has been visiting Greece regularly since the 1990s where he stays at Kiparissia in the Peloponese.