Günther Uecker b. 1930

Günther Uecker is a German sculptor, op and installation artist. He has studied at the Fachhochschule für angewandte Kunst in Wismar and the Kunstakademie in Berlin-Weißensee, where he was confronted with the doctrine of Socialist Realism. In 1955, he left to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Otto Pankok; there he worked on woodcut, informal pictures (finger painting and dirt pictures) and nail objects. In 1957 he got to know Yves klein, Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and realised his first Nagelbild Informelle Struktur.  While in his early works the material character still stayed in the foreground, Uecker developed in the following year serial horizontal and vertical structures.

At the beginning of the 1960s, he began hammering nails into pieces of furniture, musical instruments and household objects, while combining nails with the theme of light, creating series of light kinetic nails. A-x Zero Garden from 1966, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, demonstrates his use of nails to create the illusion of movement. Natural materials such as sand and water were included in his light and electric installations, resulting in an interaction of the different elements to create a sensation of space, movement and time. Uecker's oeuvre includes paintings, object art, installations as well as stage designs and films.