Carte Blanche V: Leon Janucek – Dieter Finke

Carte Blanche V:
Leon Janucek – Dieter Finke
24-JAN-09 – 22-MAR-09, GfZK-2

Opening on 23-JAN-09 at 7 p.m.

Curated by Barbara Steiner

Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 9/11
D-04107 Leipzig
E-Mail: office [​at​] gfzk.de

www.gfzk-online.de

The Berlin collector Leon Janucek has decided to put on a solo exhibition of artist Dieter Finke (born 1939). Janucek has been an admirer and collector of Finke’s work since the 1980s. For him, Finke is “one of Germany’s most underrated artists”. Dieter Finke, the last master pupil of Renée Sintenis, has worked in Berlin since the 1950s, with extended stays in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. He is in contact with the most important artists of his day and his works can be found in many private collections in Berlin. However, apart from a few loose collaborations, he is not represented by a commercial gallery. His largest solo exhibition to date was held in the Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City in 2000. The Leipzig exhibition is his first large retrospective. On the occasion of the exhibition, the publishing house Jovis in Berlin will bring out a book which not only presents the work of Dieter Finke but also places it in its proper context.

After his early years, in which he dedicated himself primarily to animal sculpture, Finke moved in the direction of non-objective art in the 1960s and 1970s with abstract, sometimes organic-looking wood pieces and wall hangings made from colourful, partially painted acrylic glass.

In the late 1970s he returned little by little to his leitmotif, animal representation. In addition to sculpture, painting and drawing were, from the beginning, important media through which he expressed himself. Finke’s affinity to abstract sculpture can be felt in his work to this day, especially in his use of space. Finke’s animals and other representations of nature are greatly simplified in form, or abstracted, and reduced to a few distinctive features. The bodies are deconstructed and reassembled; traces of this process are visible. In his choice of materials, in his formal execution and in his fragile-looking presentations, he succeeded in reflecting the delicate relationship between man and beast.

Dieter Finke was born in Berlin in 1939 and studied under sculptors Paul Dierkes and Renée Sintensis at the College of Arts there. After several years of residence in New York, with Gordon Matta-Clark amongst others, Finke once again lives in the West of Berlin.

Leon Janucek was long active in the film industry until he took over the family business in 1997. He collects art and supports artists. His collection comprises works from the 20th century and the present day, including those by Gabriele Münter, Carl Hofer, Max Pechstein, as well as by Muntean & Rosenblum, Julian Opie, Max Neumann and Dieter Finke. It also includes a series of bronzes by such notables as Käthe Kollwitz, Ernst Barlach, Georg Kolbe, August Gaul, Renée Sintensis and Anna Bogouchevskaia. These come from his mother’s side of the Noack family of bronze founders.

GALERIE FÜR ZEITGENÖSSISCHE KUNST LEIPZIG
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART LEIPZIG
Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 9/11
D-04107 Leipzig

T: +49.341.140 81 26 [reception]
T: +49.341.140 81 0 [office]
F: +49.341.140 81 11

E-Mail: office@gfzk.de

www.gfzk-online.de

OPENING HOURS

Tuesday through Sunday: 12 noon – 7 p.m.
Monday: closed