The internationally famend German curator Kasper König, a co-founder of Skulptur Projekte Münster and some of the influential up to date artwork exhibition-makers of his period, has died on the age of 80 in Berlin, the Museum Ludwig stated in a press announcement. It didn’t give the reason for demise.
König “formed the artwork discourse of the final 5 a long time like no different”, based on the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the place he served as director from 2000 to 2012. The museum stated it mourns “the lack of a beneficiant, impartial, humorous, energetic one that at all times carried us away together with his enthusiasm for artwork”.
Born in Mettingen, northwest Germany, in 1943, König began his profession on the Galerie Rudolf Zwirner in Cologne as an intern. He met artists within the Rhineland together with Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter—who later served as a witness at König’s wedding ceremony. In 1963, he went to London to work in industrial galleries and attended lectures on the Courtauld Institute.
In 1965, his work took him to New York, the place he primarily lived till 1978 and gained an in depth worldwide community; whereas engaged on European exhibition initiatives, he turned acquainted with artists together with Carl Andre, Hanne Darboven, Dan Graham, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman and Andy Warhol. On the age of 23, he curated his first exhibition—a Claes Oldenburg present in Stockholm. In 1968, he based an artwork publishing firm together with his brother. Walther König’s agency at the moment operates bookstores in most German cities in addition to in museums.
The primary Skulptur Projekte Münster, which König and Klaus Bussmann conceived as a method of familiarising town’s inhabitants with fashionable and up to date artwork, occurred in 1977. Artists have been invited to decide on a spot within the metropolis to put in a sculpture. It has since taken place each 10 years, turning into an necessary side of the cathedral metropolis’s identification and worldwide profile.
König returned to Germany to dwell full-time in 1978 and taught—first on the Düsseldorf Artwork Academy from 1984, then, from 1988, as a professor on the Städel artwork college in Frankfurt, which he led because the rector from 1989. In 1987, he based Portikus in Frankfurt, an area affiliated with the Städelschule and devoted to exhibiting younger and rising up to date artists.
His son Johann König described rising up together with his dad and mom in Cologne within the Nineteen Eighties in his autobiography: “Dan Graham lived with us for some time. We went on vacation with On Kawara. After a ‘Fluxus baptism’, Nam June Paik was my godfather… I performed soccer between an Andy Warhol Brillo Field, a Concetto spaziale bronze by Lucio Fontana and a Franz West couch.”
König’s 12-year tenure on the Museum Ludwig in Cologne got here at a important time for town, which was ceding its decades-long standing as Germany’s art-world hub to Berlin. “Together with his information, his judgment and his incorruptibility, he raised the Museum Ludwig to a world-class stage once more,” stated Yilmaz Dziewior, the current director of the museum.
In 2003, König curated the Austrian pavilion for the Venice Biennale. Among the many dozens of solo exhibitions he curated have been reveals dedicated to Donald Judd, A.R. Penck, On Kawara, Richter, Gregor Schneider, Isa Genzken and Wolfgang Tillmans. In 2014, he curated the controversial Manifesta 10 exhibition in St Petersburg and in 2017 took over the creative route of Skulptur Projekte Münster. In 2009, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum honoured König’s profession with a lifetime achievement award.
He didn’t think about himself a basic collector, however somewhat purchased spontaneously or acquired items. He donated 50 works to the Museum Ludwig final yr, together with items by Pawel Althamer, Maria Eichhorn, Genzken, Graham, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jenny Holzer, Richard Lengthy and Jeremy Deller.
The Cologne public sale home Van Ham final month introduced it’s going to supply 400 works from König’s assortment at public sale on 1-2 October. Among the many artists whose works characteristic within the sale are On Kawara, Nicole Eisenman, Maria Lassnig and Polke.
König was married 4 occasions; to Ilka Schellenberg, with whom he had two daughters and one son; then to Edda Köchl, an actress and illustrator and mom of his youthful son; to Barbara Weiss, a Berlin artwork supplier who died in 2016; and eventually to Heidi Specker, a Berlin-based artist. König’s sons Leo and Johann are each artwork sellers—Leo in New York, and Johann in Berlin.
Kasper König; born Mettingen, Germany, 21 November 1943; died Berlin 9 August 2024
