Jörg Immendorff:The conductor with the brush

In the 1980s, Jörg Immendorff became one of the best-known contemporary German artists. His paintings, sculptures and graphics sparked controversial debates. The painter, who was born in Lower Saxony, died in 2007.

by Michael Koehler

Jörg Immendorff often worked for the opera stage, and in his life he also loved grand opera and strong performances. "I started with classical ballet in my youth and always had an affinity for the stage and the opera. Somehow I then kept the scenic aspect in my work and also the conducting with the brush," he once said in an interview .

Jörg Immendorff:"Things upset me"

This view of the world as a stage was awakened by Jörg Immendorff through his teacher Teo Otto in the early 1960s. The painter, who was born in Bleckede near Lüneburg, first studied stage design with Otto and from 1964 became perhaps the best-known student of Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

Slogans or questions about the social position of the painter can often be found in Immendorff's pictures. Painter, where are you? "I just take care of social things, things upset me...", he explained his attitude.

"Café Deutschland" - political cycle from the 70s

Throughout his life, some simply saw him as a better stage painter. For others, he was and is the most important political painter of the 1970s. In any case, he was one of the best-known and internationally most successful German post-war artists. Most associate his name with the cycle of political paintings from the mid-1970s, the "Café Deutschland". The painter, as he explained in an interview, saw "the division of Germany as a global problem. So, the two German states as buffer zones, as bumpers of the two world cars that threatened to crash into each other. I couldn't understand others who saw the explosiveness of this Topics not understood."

Best known student of Joseph Beuys

Emerging from the student and protest movements of the 1960s, Immendorff was a Maoist. That was chic back then and almost mandatory. At that time, he also saw no more right to exist for painting as L'art pour l'art.

All art should be socially and politically committed. His teacher Josef Beuys encouraged him to do so. Immendorff once recalled:"I was dissatisfied with a picture and painted over it, crossed it out, as one thwarts such a thing, and wrote underneath it:'Stop painting!' At that moment, Beuys entered the studio at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and said:'Leave it like that, Jörg, great picture!'"

Immendorff transferred the vocabulary of energy and fire from performance artist and art theorist Joseph Beuys, for whom energetic processes were a central creative theme, to social engagement. He stuck to it to the end:"I don't teach for nothing and I need this interaction with young people who give me courage again. Wilhelm Lehmbruck used the beautiful phrase 'pass on the flame' to describe it."

Fighting deadly disease changed Immendorff's work

Since his suffering from muscular degeneration, which was also made public, made it increasingly impossible for him to paint himself, the headline-grabbing adventures became more frequent:sex parties, cocaine and stem cells, which he had injected into his brain in China. In 2000 he married the Bulgarian painter Oda, who was 30 years his junior, and they had a daughter. Then things got quieter around the wild man, also influenced by the disease.

An autobiographical turn could be seen in his paintings. The last works are different, almost mystical. Influences from Francis Picabia, messengers of death and enigmatic images and no more agitprop like in the 70s. His friendship with former chancellor Gerhard Schröder led to the informal commission of an oil portrait for the chancellery. To the end he always encouraged himself to paint, to climb the ladder. "I also have the term 'victory' on the painter's ladder so I don't always fall into depression. That's part of it, I guess, but it's also something serious. Every painting I approve that I'm in tune with is a kind of victory."

"A good image must create magic"

Today there is hardly a museum that does not have copies of Immendorff's "Café Deutschland Cycle" from the late 1970s as part of its collection of contemporary German art. German division and post-war reality appear in it. Stylistically, slogans can often be found on it, calls for protest - and a little monkey. This is the painter himself in an ironic self-portrait:"A good picture redeems itself with the viewer. A good picture must create magic."

The painter and art professor Jörg Immendorff died on May 28, 2007 at the age of 61 in his home in Düsseldorf.

Jörg Immendorff - Short CV

• Born on June 14, 1945 in Bleckede near Lüneburg
• 1963-1964 studied stage art with Teo Otto at the Düsseldorf Art Academy
• 1964 Admission to Joseph Beuys' class at the Düsseldorf Art Academy
• 1968-1980 work as an art teacher in Düsseldorf
• 1981 to 1985 various guest teaching positions in Stockholm, Cologne and Munich, among others
• 1987-1988 Stay in Auckland
• 1989 Professor at the State University of Fine Arts in Frankfurt a. M.
• From 1996 he was a professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy
• 1997 Appointment as a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg
• died on May 28, 2007 in Düsseldorf