IMMENDORFF, JÖRG
1945 Bleckede/Elbe–2007 Duesseldorf

Title: Malerstamm Jörg.
Date: 2002 (draft).
Technique: Bronze, black patinated.
Measurement: 230 x 85 x 122 cm.
Notation: Signed and numbered above the plinth verso: Immendorff 2/6.
Foundry mark: Next to this foundry stamp SCHMÄKE DÜSSELDORF.
Number: 2/6.



Provenance:
- - Private collection


Exhibition:
- Galerie Sewening, Sylt 2025


Literature:
- Galerie Rackey (ed.): Jörg Immendorff – 24 Bronzen, Bad Honnef 2012, cat. no. 11, ill.



- Larger-than-life depiction of the „Maler-Affen“ Jörg Immendorff

- Iconic motif from the late work of one of the most influential German artists of the post-war period

- Outstanding work from the famous „Malerstamm“ series



A Life in Art

Jörg Immendorff ranks among the defining German artists of the postwar era. The oeuvre of the student of Joseph Beuys is shaped by an intensive engagement with German history, politics, and cultural identity. Through painting and sculpture alike, Immendorff reflected upon the position of the artist between social commitment and personal self-definition.

Born in 1945 in Bleckede near Lüneburg, Immendorff grew up in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Between 1963 and 1964, he studied stage design for three semesters under Teo Otto at the State Art Academy in Düsseldorf before transferring to the class of Joseph Beuys, whose influence proved decisive. His first artistic actions at the academy date to 1965–66, followed by the provocative LIDL Actions between 1968 and 1970, carried out in the context of student unrest and the Fluxus movement.

From 1968 to 1980, Immendorff worked as an art teacher before dedicating himself entirely to independent artistic practice. He held a professorship at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main from 1989 to 1992 and, beginning in 1996, at the State Art Academy in Düsseldorf. In 1997, the artist was diagnosed with ALS, a severe neurodegenerative disease, and died in Düsseldorf in 2007 at the age of sixty-one.



From Neo-Dadaist Agitation to Modern History Painting

While the German postwar avant-garde decisively distanced itself from representational art, Immendorff—after his early politically agitational actions—committed himself from the late 1970s onward to a renewed form of history painting.

Within these works, personal experiences intertwine with political meanings, ideological fragments, and national emblems to create a symbolically charged and often theatrical visual language. More intensely than perhaps any other West German artist, Immendorff engaged with the realities of a divided Germany, not least shaped by his close friendship with A. R. Penck on the other side of the Berlin Wall.

He gained international recognition through the monumental sixteen-part cycle Café Deutschland (1977–1984), which became one of the defining artistic responses to Germany’s political division.



The Monkey as Alter Ego

Although primarily known as a painter, sculpture assumed increasing importance in Immendorff’s later work. Here, too, the monkey emerges prominently as the artist’s alter ego—a second self—most notably in the celebrated Malerstamm (Painter Tribe) series, initiated in 2002.

Across numerous sculptures, Immendorff gathers admired painters from past and present into a kind of tribal lineage or ancestral community, including Constantin Brâncuși, Giorgio de Chirico, Caspar David Friedrich, Hans Baldung, and Kurt Schwitters, among others.

Immendorff himself also assumes the role of the “Painter-Monkey,” which for him symbolizes the contradictory nature of artistic existence—caught between imitation and creative power, conviction and self-doubt, optimism and failure.

While a continuous reflection on the role of art within political and social action permeates the artist’s entire oeuvre, this perspective condenses in the Malerstamm series into a particularly powerful meditation on the artist’s own existence.

Doris Hansmann



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#Jörg Immendorff #Neo-Expressionism #Neue Wilde #New History Painting #Germany #Post-War Art #Sculpture.







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