German painter, graphic designer, designer and author Friedrich Meckseper was born in Bremen in 1936. He grew up in Stuttgart. From 1952 to 1955, he apprenticed as a specialized mechanic because he wanted to become a locomotive designer.  However, his future took a different direction. Friedrich Meckseper began studying art at the Academy of Visual Arts in Stuttgart in the mid-1950s, and from 1957 to 1959 he studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. His first etchings date from this...

• Back to Artists & Stock Read biography ARTIST ALARM

  Biography of Friedrich Meckseper

  German painter, graphic designer, designer and author Friedrich Meckseper was born in Bremen in 1936. He grew up in Stuttgart. From 1952 to 1955, he apprenticed as a specialized mechanic because he wanted to become a locomotive designer.  However, his future took a different direction. Friedrich Meckseper began studying art at the Academy of Visual Arts in Stuttgart in the mid-1950s, and from 1957 to 1959 he studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. His first etchings date from this period. In 1963, after receiving the German prize at the Villa Massimo in Rome, he spent a year in the Italian capital.
  Meckseper was strongly influenced by many artists such as Giorgio Morandi and Saul Steinberg.
  His work is characterized by an enigmatic tension in a minimalist arrangement of objects, coupled with great precision in technical execution; technical elements such as balances, gears or clocks are recurrent in his work. His paintings and prints give the impression that the world is a mysterious mechanism, strange devices and amazing architectural structures appear. The artist quickly became successful, not only in Germany, but also abroad. In contrast to many of his colleagues, Friedrich Meckseper did not seek fame as a noisy media star.The artist was not really interested in aesthetic fashions, but in modernity. His imagery is figurative and yet unreal, silent and irritating, sometimes disturbing. In 1972, on the occasion of an exhibition in Düsseldorf, for the British "Guardian", he was even someone from a "time out of time". For many years, from 1961 to 1984, he lived in the artists' colony of Worpswede in northern Germany. From time to time, Friedrich Meckseper left this rural idyll and ventured into a completely different landscape: he crossed the Alps several times in a gas balloon. The artist's last major exhibition was held in Passau, Germany, in 2017 at the Museum of Modern Art. Friedrich Meckseper died in 2019 at the age of 82. He is buried in Worpswede.
  
  

  

  You wish to be alarmed for any new work by this artist? Please enter your email.

  I have read and accept the website mchampetier.com's Confidentiality and personal data protection charter.

  Alarm me