Per Kirkeby. 1938-2018

The Michael Werner Kunsthandel is honoured to present an exhibition in Cologne of Per Kirkeby's work. Kirkeby, who died last year (* 1 September 1938, ꝉ 9 May 2018), has been represented by the gallery since 1974.  He is widely accepted as the most influential Danish artist, and his work has been exhibited in internationally renowned museums over the past decades. Particularly significant in this respect was the comprehensive retrospective exhibition organised by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, the Tate Modern in London and the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf (2008/09). His work was also the subject of major exhibitions in the Phillips Collection, Washington (2012), the NY Carlsberg Glyphotek, Copenhagen (2012), the Museum Küppersmühle, Duisburg (2012), the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (2012), the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2014), and is currently on show in the Kunsthalle Krems (2018/19).

Kirkeby studied Geology in Copenhagen until 1964, and nature continued to be a central point of reference for all his work, for which he employed a wide range of media. From the outset, he was involved with performative art, worked with film, created sculptures in brick and bronze, made drawings, and worked as a writer and painter. It was his paintings that were to propel him to fame. The ability to effortlessly overcome the distinction between the abstract and the figurative is the distinctive hallmark of his work. His paintings combine objectivity and sobriety with emotion and poetry. Kirkeby had the gift of expressing nature's beauty and energy with a few sparse brushstrokes.

The Cologne exhibition will show paintings from the last 25 years, bronze sculptures and works on paper, some for the first time in public.