Horst Antes – Cologne Fine Art Prize 2018

This year’s Cologne Fine Art Prize honors the German artist Horst Antes for his life’s work. The award is endowed with 10,000 Euro and is conferred jointly by Koelnmesse and the Bundesverband Deutscher Galerien und Kunsthändler e.V. (BVDG/German Association of Galleries and Art Dealers) on the occasion of Cologne Fine Art. Previous prize winners include: Dieter Roth, Thomas Bayrle, Sigmar Polke, Gert and Uwe Tobias, Katharina Sieverding, Georg Baselitz, Tony Cragg, Candida Höfer, and Karin Kneffel.

The three-time documenta participant Horst Antes became famous with his “head figures”, an image idea that offered endless possibilities for variation. Antes became known to a broad public through his metal sculptures in urban spaces. Since around the mid 1980s, Horst Antes has made a kind of iconic turnaround, and has since then taken up two fundamental elements of human culture, the number and the house, as central themes.

A special exhibition at Cologne Fine Art 2018 presents five large works, personally selected by Horst Antes: a window painting on loan from the Würth Collection, as well as several house paintings created between 1997 and 2006 and originating from various collections. The double portrait “House” and “Garden”, in which the artist exhausts all possibilities of abstraction, can also be viewed.

Horst Antes – Cologne Fine Art Prize 2018. Cologne (Germany), November 21/22, 2018.

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Press text (excerpt):

Horst Antes is the closed eye of the great Manitou who sees everything inwards.
(Friedhelm Häring)

This year’s COLOGNE FINE ART Prize honours the painter, sculptor and draughtsman Horst Antes for his life’s work. With his extensive oeuvre, he has achieved a position of outstanding importance in art extending from the 1960s to the present.

Horst Antes, born 1936 in Heppenheim at the edge of the Odenwald, already began to win prizes and scholarships at an early age, including coveted study visits in Florence and Rome. Having only turned thirty, he was appointed professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe, where he had studied at the end of the 1950s with the great HAP Grieshaber. He worked there for decades, as well as in Berlin and in Italy, where he now lives.

Horst Antes is a unique artist who has always consistently pursued his own artistic path and never let himself be lead astray by the trends of the art business. He became famous with his “head figures”. With them, he broke through the primacy of the informal and the abstraction that had asserted itself in the 1950s, and which was linked with a turning away from figuration. His early work reveals a downright unfettered sensuality. Vividly coloured, wild, sometimes aggressive pictorial gestures that are bound in energetic forms that burst out of the image space dominate here.

With the head figures, Antes had found an image idea that offered endless possibilities for variation. We encounter them not only in his paintings and print graphic works, but also as sculptures. Although the figures with massive heads and extra-long legs appear disconcerting and in some cases threatening, they were unbelievably popular. Behind the motif is Antes’ intensive engagement with ethnological objects.

This is because the three-time documenta participant Horst Antes is a passionate collector and a profound connoisseur of ethnographica. His extensive collections of Kachina figures of the Hopi indians of New Mexico, of indian headdresses and of auxiliary spirits of the Ewe and Dangwe from Ghana were documented in comprehensive catalogues he compiled himself, which are today viewed as standard works.

Horst Antes has also become known to a broad public through his metal sculptures in urban spaces. For example, through the multipiece ensemble “Der Ring – Der Fresser – Die Insel” (The ring, the glutton, the island), which has been standing directly in front of the Düsseldorf central station since 1987, or through the “Platz der Köpfe“ (Square of heads) (1980 to 1983) in front of the ZDF in Mainz. His works can be found around the world in countless museums and private art collections.

Since around the mid 1980s, Horst Antes has made a kind of iconic turnaround, and has since then taken up two fundamental elements of human culture, the number and the house, as central themes. In the case of the so-called date or time paintings, the numerals are painted on top of one another, and result in a dense pictorial surface. In the windowless house paintings, a formerly broad painting pallet makes way for occasionally darker shades. Graphite, black and heavy brown-red shades increasingly define the image areas, from which, however, the intense blue of the roofs radiates.

At COLOGNE FINE ART, a special event with five large works is being presented; personally selected by Horst Antes: a window painting on loan from the Würth Collection, as well as several house paintings created between 1997 and 2006 and originating from various collections. The double portrait “House” and “Garden”, in which the artist exhausts all possibilities of abstraction, can also be viewed. This work of the now 82 year-old artist, is from this year, 2018.

The COLOGNE FINE ART Prize is endowed with 10,000 Euro and is conferred jointly by Koelnmesse and the Bundesverband Deutscher Galerien und Kunsthändler e.V. (BVDG/German Association of Galleries and Art Dealers) on the occasion of COLOGNE FINE ART.

The previous prize winners: Felix Droese (1996), Ottmar Hörl (1997), Dieter Roth (1998), Thomas Huber (1999), Thomas Bayrle (2000), Astrid Klein (2001), Sigmar Polke (2002), Jörg Sasse (2003), Berlin Kupferstichkabinett (2004), Thomas Schütte (2005), Dieter Krieg (2006), Gert and Uwe Tobias (2007), Katharina Sieverding (2008), Georg Baselitz (2009), Andreas Schulze (2010), Günther Uecker (2011), Tony Cragg (2012), Jürgen Klauke (2013), Leiko Ikemura (2014), Candida Höfer (2015), Karin Kneffel (2016), Georg Hornemann (2017).

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