German
b. December 5, 1952, Füssen, Germany ⏤
d. 2013, Areuse, Switzerland
Lived and worked in Munich, Germany and Areuse, Switzerland

Günther Förg was a renowned painter, sculptor and photographer. whose artistic oeuvre encompasses paintings, graphic and sculptural works as well as a great body of architectural photographs. His geometric, abstract, and heavily-dyed pictures have a strong decorative character. Förg combined materials and media in painting, sculpture and photography. The themes of his large-scale architectural photographs are Bauhaus and fascist aesthetics, while his monochrome wall paintings and lead paintings are reflections on art.

Günther Förg's oeuvre is marked by a pictorial language that encompasses several materials and media, focussing mainly on the relation to space. Since the late 1970s, he developed this language in the fields of photography, painting, sculpture and installations. With his material-accentuating, abstract style of painting that often manifested itself in black and grey monochrome works, Förg also unlocked the potential of lead and aluminium as new painting substrates. In the 1990s, he created large-format, coloured window and grid pictures as well as works in the tradition of Colour Field Painting, but always in the context of exploring and reinterpreting spaces. In his photographic series, he dealt with buildings that shaped the 20th century history of architecture. Yet here, too, the relation to space remained important and inspired Förg to further explore architectural structures and construction elements, outside of their context, from an artistic viewpoint. Förg's works were exhibited at documenta IX in 1992. He became a professor at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 1999.

Förg's works have been widely exhibited internationally. In 1992, he was represented at the Documenta art fair, and in 1996, he won the Wolfgang Hahn Prize. His work can be seen in museum art collections internationally.