Lothar Baumgarten is one of the leading exponents of conceptual art from the latter part of the 1960s. He studied at Staatliche Akademie für Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe [State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe] (1968) and at the Kunstakademie [Fine Arts Academy] in Düsseldorf (1969-1971), where he was taught by Joseph Beuys. His work, using different media including temporary sculptures, installations and photography, emerged from his interest in anthropology and ethnography regarding the concept of “otherness” and the questioning of Western thought and representation under the influence of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s comparative structuralist method. His early works included Unsettled Objects (1968-1969) and his film Origin of the Night [Amazon Cosmos] (1973-1977). In the wake of his travels in Brazil and time spent with the Yanomami Indians in the Venezuelan Amazon between 1978 and 1980, his work delved even further into the way that Western discourse perceives the “Other”, their environment and their language. Indeed, the problem of language is another key factor in his work, alluding to the cultural specificities of the exhibition space in which he was intervening. One such example was the installation at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1993 referring to North-American Indian tribes.
After his first solo show at the Konrad Fischer Galerie (Düsseldorf, Germany, 1972), his work was featured internationally at events including Documenta 5, 7, 9 and 10 (1972, 1982, 1992 and 1997); the Venice Biennale (1978, 1984 and 2001), where he was awarded the Golden Lion in 1984. He also had solo shows, particularly at the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, United States, 1987), the Georges Pompidou Centre (Paris, 1987), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, 1993), the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg, Germany, 2001) and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (2008). In 2016, he installed The Ship is Going Under, the Ice is Breaking Through at the Palacio de Cristal, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid.
Lothar Baumgarten is one of the leading exponents of conceptual art from the latter part of the 1960s. He studied at Staatliche Akademie für Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe [State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe] (1968) and at the Kunstakademie [Fine Arts Academy] in Düsseldorf (1969-1971), where he was taught by Joseph Beuys. His work, using different media including temporary sculptures, installations and photography, emerged from his interest in anthropology and ethnography regarding the concept of “otherness” and the questioning of Western thought and representation under the influence of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s comparative structuralist method. His early works included Unsettled Objects (1968-1969) and his film Origin of the Night [Amazon Cosmos] (1973-1977). In the wake of his travels in Brazil and time spent with the Yanomami Indians in the Venezuelan Amazon between 1978 and 1980, his work delved even further into the way that Western discourse perceives the “Other”, their environment and their language. Indeed, the problem of language is another key factor in his work, alluding to the cultural specificities of the exhibition space in which he was intervening. One such example was the installation at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1993 referring to North-American Indian tribes.
After his first solo show at the Konrad Fischer Galerie (Düsseldorf, Germany, 1972), his work was featured internationally at events including Documenta 5, 7, 9 and 10 (1972, 1982, 1992 and 1997); the Venice Biennale (1978, 1984 and 2001), where he was awarded the Golden Lion in 1984. He also had solo shows, particularly at the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, United States, 1987), the Georges Pompidou Centre (Paris, 1987), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, 1993), the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg, Germany, 2001) and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (2008). In 2016, he installed The Ship is Going Under, the Ice is Breaking Through at the Palacio de Cristal, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid.