 | Thisbiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Thomas Bayrle" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(November 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Thomas Bayrle | |
|---|---|
 Bayrle in the filmThe Future of Art (2010) | |
| Born | (1937-11-07)7 November 1937 (age 87) Berlin, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouse | Helke Bayrle (died 2022) |
| Parent(s) | Alf Bayrle Elisabeth Weiss |
| Awards | Hessian Cultural Prize (1998) Goethe Plaque of the City of Frankfurt (2007) |
Thomas Bayrle (born 7 November 1937) is a German sculptor, painter, graphic artist and video artist. He is known as a pop artist.
Thomas Bayrle was born on 7 November 1937 inBerlin. He is the son of the painter and graphic artistAlf Bayrle and the art historian Elisabeth Weiss.
Bayrle wanted to become atextile engineer, and completed a two-year apprenticeship as a pattern designer and weaver in 1956.[1] While working onJacquard looms inGöppingen, Bayrle became inspired by the machine's rhythmic sound and the repetitive patterns of the fabric.[2]
From 1958 to 1961 Bayrle studied at the Werkkunstschule Offenbach.[3] Initially, he wanted to studycommercial art, but he turned toprintmaking and learned the technique oflithography andetching from Eberhard Behr.
In 1961 he founded the Gulliver Press together with Bernhard Jäger and made a name for himself as a printer and publisher of artists' books.[3] One of the first books byErnst Jandl (Hosi-Anna! 1965) appeared in the Gulliver Press – illustrated by Thomas Bayrle and Bernhard Jäger.
In 1964 Bayrle appeared in documenta III, in 1977 in documenta 6 and in 2012 in dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel.
From 1969 to 1972 Bayrle ran a creative studio with Hans Jörg Kellermann in Frankfurt's Westend, which produced three-dimensional objects as Bayrle & Kellermann – The Makers of Display, which oscillated between art and advertising, and also ran a screen printing workshop. Clients included the chocolate manufacturerFerrero SpA, the carpet brand Enkalon, the fashion designerPierre Cardin and the trade union bank BfG.
From 1972 to 2002 Bayrle taught at theStädelschule in Frankfurt.[3] His students includedHaegue Yang,Jana Euler,Tomas Saraceno, Martin Liebscher, Marko Lehanka, Georg Peez, Manfred Stumpf, Kerstin Jeckel and Stefan Müller.[4] In 1995 he held a visiting professorship atTohoku University in Japan. In 2002 he retired.[5]
Bayrle was married to the artistHelke Bayrle (1941–2022).[5] Thomas Bayrle lives and works in Frankfurt.[3]
Bayrle's work is characterized by his fascination with grids and repetition.[2] His subject matter includes the position of the individual within socio-political, industrial, and technological regimes.[2] By reflecting on a world of goods as an accumulation of multipliable, repeatable forms and pictograms, Bayrle not only provides a commentary on society, but also refers to his own artistic means. Bayrle's influences include pop art,Sigmar Polke,the Frankfurt School, thepost-war economic boom, and the Americanization of Frankfurt.[2]
Bayrle's signature style is what he calls a "superform": an image made from a composite of many repeated images.[1]
Bayrle was among the first German artists to produce computer-generated and animated art.
Bayrle has had solo exhibitions inDüsseldorf, Montreal,Cologne,Graz,Frankfurt, Vienna,Venice,Auckland, Berlin,Duisburg, Geneva,Karlsruhe, New York,Zürich andAustin/Texas.
Bayrle's works are represented in museums, public and private collections. In 1984, he took part in From Here – Two Months of New German Art in Düsseldorf. In 2002, he had an exhibition at theStädel Museum in Frankfurt .
In 2005 and 2006, Bayrle took part in exhibitions at the Center for Art and Media Technology, Karlsruhe, the Kunstmuseum Thun, the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK), Frankfurt, and the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel. In 2007 Bayrle exhibited at theFonds Régional d'Art ContemporainLimousin (FRAC), Limoges and at the Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo. In 2008, he was a participant in theBiennale of Sydney (Art Gallery of New South Wales). In 2009 a major retrospective exhibition was held at theMuseu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in Barcelona. In 2012, he took part in the dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel. Bayrle documented his examination of the Christian faith in 2014 with a selection of his works in the exhibition catholic in the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter Cologne and in the exhibition Agnus Dei in the St. Matthäus-Kirche at the Kulturforum Berlin.
For the 2003/2004 season at theVienna State Opera, he designed a huge painting (176 m2) as part of the "Iron Curtain" exhibition series conceived by museum in progress.
In his solo exhibition 'If something is too long – make it longer' at the Vienna Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), Bayrle combined traditional manual techniques with computer-generated art of the information age for the 2017/18 season. Significant new productions were also created for the exhibition, including the installation iPhone meets Japan, a walk-in scene with which Bayrle reflected a Japanese Shunga from the MAK's Asia collection in a "super form" made of iPhones.[6]
Since March 2018, the Municipal Gallery in the Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau in Munich has been showing some of the artist's futuristic compositions. As part of the exhibition, I'm a Believer. Pop Art and contemporary art from the Lenbachhaus and the KiCo Foundation will present the large-format sculpture "Autostrada" (2003) and other graphic wall panels from the collection.
