Reinhard Voigt

After being trained as a ceramist, Voigt studied from 1965 to 1971 with Hans Thiemann, David Hockney and Gotthard Graubner, among others, at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. After his studies, he had solo exhibitions at the Galerie M. E. Thelen in Cologne. Voigt was also featured in a solo presentation in the now legendary exhibition series “14 x 14” at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (1968-1973) alongside Palermo, Rainer Ruthenbeck, Georg Baselitz, Gerhard Richter and others of the then emerging generation of German painters.^[1] The painter emigrated to New York in 1978, moved to Los Angeles in 1985, and in 2000 moved to upstate New York, where he remained until his return to Berlin in 2017. Voigt has always been faithful to the grid he developed in the academy as a basis and site for exploring the categories of form, abstraction, figuration, anonymity, ductus, color tonality, and ultimately beauty and legibility. The formal stringency of his approach has consequently led to describing his work as a negotiating space of the art-historically significant grid.^[2] It is in this context that his work was also exhibited in the 2012 exhibition “Rasterfahndung” alongside those of Roy Lichtenstein, Sigmar Polke, and others at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.^[3][4] Only recently has a reassessment taken place that also situates Voigt’s lifelong work as a commentary on post-1945 German painting.^[5] Works by the artist are in the Bank of America Collection, London, the Eli Broad (Sun America Collection), Santa Monica, USA, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, the Collection of the State of Baden-Württemberg, the Städtische Galerie, Wolfsburg, the Museum of Modern Art, New York,^[6] and in numerous private collections. Reinhard Voigt was awarded a grant from the Stiftung Kunstfonds in 2021 for the cataloguing of his works.^[7] The artist lives and works in Berlin.^[8]