Günther Uecker was born in Wendorf, Mecklenburg on 13 March 1930. He began his artistic education in 1949 when he took up studies at Wismar. He then went to the art school in Berlin-Weisensee and in 1955 to Dusseldorf. Here Uecker studied under Otto Pankok at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf and where he was appointed professor in 1976. He made his first nail pictures towards the end of the1950s. In 1961 he joined the avant-garde group ZERO, along with along with Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. Günther Uecker exhibited at Documenta 3, 4, and 6, and at the German pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 1970. Awarded the Kaiserring of Goslar in 1983; member of the Ordre pour le Merite, artists who propagated a new beginning of art in opposition to the German Informel. He occupied himself with the medium of light, studied optical phenomena, series of structures and the realms of oscillation which actively integrate the viewer and enable him to influence the visual process by kinetic or manual interference. Uecker, Mack and Piene began working together in joint studios at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1962 and installed a 'Salon de Lumiere' at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Other 'light salons' followed in Krefeld and in Frankfurt. Since 1966, after the group ZERO dissolved and a last joint exhibition, Uecker increasingly used nails as an artistic means of expression - a material which, until today, stands in the centre of his oeuvre. At the beginning of the 1960s he began hammering nails into pieces of furniture, musical instruments and household objects, then he began combining nails with the theme of light, creating his series of light nails and kinetic nails and other works. Light and electricity continued to be one of the main subjects and natural materials such as sand and water were included in his installations, resulting in an interaction of the different elements to create a sensation of light, space, movement and time. Günther Uecker 's oeuvre includes painting, object art, installations as well as stage designs and films. His origins explain his interest in the eastern European avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, but he is likewise interested in Asian cultures and their ideas. Recent exhibition include Günther Uecker , 20 Kapitel, Neuer Beerliner Kunstverein im Martin-Gropius-Bau, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Ostfildern, 2005; Günther Uecker , Brief an Peking, National Museum of China in Beijing, China, 2007; Günther Uecker : Post for Ordos, Ordos Art Museum, China, 2008 and Art of Two Germanys, Cold War Cultures, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2009
His works can be found in the permanent collections of the Tate Modern, London, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angels, CA, Museum Abteiberg, Moenchengladbach, Germany, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany, Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy
