Heinz Günter Mebusch (1952–2001) was a German

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. Duties and types of photograp ...

and experimental

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

born in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

Biography

Mebusch studied

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

and visual communication with Otto Steinert and Erich vom Endt. He lived and worked in about forty countries in Europe, Africa and America. Mebusch spoke fluent English, Spanish, French and was familiar with

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

. He was also a lecturer at the Folkwang-School in

Essen Essen () is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as ...

and organized and curated art and photo-projects, including the Beuys Festival in 1991 in Düsseldorf.

His works

Mebusch's estate maintains archives of his film negatives, published vintage prints and manuscripts on photography, art and

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

. His estate is administrated by the charitable European Artforum Culture Foundation (ACF).

Exhibitions

Mebusch exhibited in Costa Rica, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany and USA and represented Germany at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

in 1999.

Artist portraits

His ongoing project of over two decades was ''Face to Face'', portraits of modern and contemporary artists. More than 200 artists-portraits were realized from 1979 to 2000. A few working and vintage prints were made still before his early death. In a few cases these photo-prints have additional signatures and over-paintings by the respective artist.Reise zum Planeten Ars bei Auktionsportal lot-tissimo, 10/2004
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portfolio Portfolio may refer to: Objects * Portfolio (briefcase), a type of briefcase Collections * Portfolio (finance), a collection of assets held by an institution or a private individual * Artist's portfolio, a sample of an artist's work or a ...

of all his portraits was prepared by Mebusch and a limited number of these portraits were prepared by as large-format prints. The final edition, based on Mebusch's specifications, will be realized under the title ''Face to Face – Planet of the Artists'', by ArtForum Editions, through the Artforum Culture Foundation. Black and white portraits and colour prints were made of

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( ; ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and Aesthetics, art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism and sociology. With Heinrich Böll, , Caroline Tisdall, Rober ...

, James Lee Byars, Ford Beckmann,

Fernando Botero Fernando Botero Angulo (19 April 1932 – 15 September 2023) was a Colombian figurative artist and sculptor. His signature style, also known as "Boterismo", depicts people and figures in large, exaggerated volume, which can represent political ...

, Herman de Vries, Felix Droese,

Erró Erró (born Guðmundur Guðmundsson in 1932 in Ólafsvík, Iceland) is a visual artist and painter, who is best known for his painted pop art collages of images from comic books and advertisements.

Keith Haring Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the Graffiti in New York City, New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual l ...

Dennis Hopper Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker, photographer and visual artist. He was considered one of the key figures of New Hollywood. He earned prizes from the Cannes Film Festival and Venice Internatio ...

Jörg Immendorff Jörg Immendorff (14 June 1945 – 28 May 2007) was a German painter, sculptor, stage designer and art professor. He was a member of the art movement ''Neue Wilde''. Early life and education Immendorff was born in Bleckede, Lower Saxony, nea ...

Martin Kippenberger Martin Kippenberger (25 February 1953 – 7 March 1997) was a German painter, draftsman, photographer, sculptor, installation and performance artist. He became known for his prolific output in a wide range of styles and media, superfiction, as w ...

, Meret Oppenheim, A.R. Penck,

Gerhard Richter Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced Abstract art, abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, photographs and Glass art, glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important con ...

Richard Serra Richard Serra (November 2, 1938 – March 26, 2024) was an American artist known for his large-scale Abstract art, abstract sculptures made for Site-specific art, site-specific landscape, urban, and Architecture, architectural settings, a ...

, Yannis Tsarouchis and

Wolf Vostell Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 – 3 April 1998) was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-coll/age are ...

. This project is in context with the projects of the same title by Vera Isler-Leiner, who had met Mebusch in Kassel in 1996.

External links

Artforum Culture Foundation Website

* ttps://www.documenta-archiv.de/de/aktuell/termine/1367/3-reise-zum-planeten-ars-kuenstlerportraits-von-heinz-guenter-mebusch Documenta Archiv
Kurzbiografie

Obituary I memento

Winter Stiftung

References

* Heinz Günter Mebusch, ''vu au passage'', 1979 * Heinz Günter Mebusch, Reise zum Planeten Ars, Wien 1985 * Heinz Günter Mebusch, Was ist Kunst?, Wien 1985 * Mebusch/Jansen/Beuys, in: Joseph Beuys: ''Denken! Denken an Joseph Beuys'', Meerbusch-Ilverich 1986 * Mebusch, Beiträge in: ''Refigured Painting. The German image 1960 - 1988'', Katalog S. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1988, 1989 * Heinz Günter Mebusch, Face to Face, Basel 1994 * Isler, Vera I Mebusch, Heinz-Günter I Moore, John CB, ''Modern Photo Portraits'', ed. O.Y. Safiriou, Thessaloniki I Cologne 1998 * ''Was war los am Beuys Geburtstag 1991? 70 Stunden Dauerfeuer! JB s GB''. Düsseldorfer Beuys-Festspiele. ( Joseph Beuys zum 70. Geburtstag). Hg. Heinz-Günter Mebusch und Tom A. Hawk, Düsseldorf 2001 * ''Meret Oppenheim'', Katalog, Berlin, Wien 2014. Zusätzlich Cover der Werbekampagne Wien und Berlin. * ''FAMOUS, Reflections on the work of the conceptual artist and photographer'', Peter Merten und K.J. Safiriou (Hg.) Thessaloniki, Athen 2016 * ''FAMOUS'', Peter Merten und K.J. Safiriou (Hg.) Thessaloniki, Athen 2016 * ''Geglaubte Wahrheiten.'' Beitrag zur Philosophie der Fotografie. Betrachtungen zum Werk des Konzeptkünstlers und Fotografen Heinz Günter Mebusch, 2 Bde., bearbeitet und neu hrsg. 2020, ArtForum Editions. * Fantastic Woman, catalogue Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt I Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, p. 66, reference p. 417 * Heinz-Günter Mebusch, ''Unveröffentlichte Schriften'', The Mebusch Archive I Artforum Culture Foundation {{DEFAULTSORT:Mebusch, Heinz Gunter 1952 births 2001 deaths Photographers from North Rhine-Westphalia Artists from Düsseldorf