Erwin Wurm - A winner on art auctions

At the moment, auction houses and art auctions on everyone's lips, and more and more art buyers and art lovers are interested in the mechanisms who make the works of a certain artist particularly successful and particularly expensive. The people who combine curiosity and passion as a commercial interest with art can also enjoy art without such knowledge.

But there is probably a small gambler in each of us, and even those who buy art because they love art has nothing against the fact that a work of art he acquired increases significantly over time. The newly emerging investors who suspect their money more securely in art than in stocks must of course try to get closer to the secret of high prices.

In this context, it is definitely interesting to take a closer look at the artists who are really traded in the world -leading auctions. Erwin Wurm has been one of these artists for several years, here an overview of his life and work:

Erwin Wurm - Life and Work

The Austrian artist was born on July 27, 1954 in Bruck an der Mur, the district capital of Styria. With around 12,500 inhabitants, Bruck an der Mur is a fairly contemplative place that could not offer the young Erwin Wurm out of chamber music hall, local museum and Singkreis, also his father, a crime officer, should not have been thrilled when his son was interested in art as a profession.

In any case, the young worm initially strived for the civil servant position, first studied art history and German studies in neighboring Graz. Then, however, he moved to the Mozarteum Salzburg , where he studied art and work education from 1977 to 1979, and from Salzburg led him to Vienna, the University of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts.

He learned design theory in Bazon Brock , depending on his Matura, he has had an eight -year to ten -year artistic training.

Wurm begins his artistic work in the early 1980s with sculptures made of sheet metal and wood and with all sorts of artistically alienated everyday objects, which were covered by the remodeler with lead and/or color. Over time, his concept of sculpture becomes more freely, it increasingly dispenses with solid material and stability.

This developed expansion of the concept of sculpture embodies (or does not justify itself). B. in a series of "dust objects" (very short: four -rails with broken surfaces). In the now over three decades of his work, Erwin Wurm is exploring the limits, the sculptures of actions and actions from performances or not separating with countless other imaginative ideas.

Wurm's self -evident sculpture concept is developed to his preliminary climax after a crucial life crisis. Wurm loses all close relatives within one year, the parents die both, the woman leaves him and takes both sons with him.

In the 1990s, he commented in a series of "One Minute Sculptures" , in which he pose exhibition visitors together with everyday objects in the exhibition that they become part of a sculpture, which is only a short time and only documented by photography.

Like many famous artists, Erwin Wurm has returned to the site of his training, and since 2002 he had been a professor of sculpture, plastic and multimedia art . In the meantime, as Wurm himself indicates, he was too busy with life and work in Vienna and New York in order to be able to teach the students appropriately.

How and where did the "breakthrough" for Erwin Wurm come?

If you ask Erwin Wurm himself, there is actually no such breakthrough that he has been able to live on his art for many years. In fact, Wurm was invited to the first group exhibition in 1982 and has its first solo exhibition in this gallery (gallery next St. Stephan) in 1984, and since then the number of its exhibition presences has increased year after year and rather even.

Wurm himself explains his success in a very sympathetic manner: ongoing artistic success can only succeed if the work recover an element that fascinates not only one generation, but also the next.

It is best to think about it even "

He also says, and "I don't make any illusions, tomorrow everything can be over with me again." ( derStandard.at/ ), and that is probably more of a mandatory, which is generally understood by "breakthrough", namely a time of a rather unexpected and amazing financial success.

How this breakthrough the artist Erwin Wurm checks cannot be determined exactly, in any case he became known to the public through his “one minute sculptures” beyond the specially interested art circles.

Certainly contributed to the fact that this "one minute sculptures" in the video of the pop group Red Hot Chili Peppers for the single "Can't Stop" 2003 was also mentioned in the video. But the pleasure that visitors can expect from his exhibitions also also play a role.

Erwin Wurm - today known worldwide for interesting and amusing exhibitions

Perhaps the customer began to spread the bizarre humor, the worms work often, with the 2006 exhibition of the Mumok (Museum Modern Art Foundation Ludwig) in the museum district in Vienna. In the exhibition "Keep a Cool Head", "House Attack" was to be seen on the roof of the museum , a single -family house, which was attached around, at that time still in original size, which was quite excited.

2009 was z. B. Wurm's exhibition "Desperate Philosopher" in the Xavier Hufkens Gallery in Brussels, with a philosopher without a head called "Suit" and so philosophical works such as the "Melting House I" , the melting house (which it does) and the "Big Gulp" , which also really looks like a big gulp.

In 2010, Wurm exhibited another philosopher without a head called Cajetan and other, as reserved as well as the subtle works in the Munich Lenbachhaus (Städtische Galerie). In the Kunstmuseum Bonn there are works from 2007 to 2009, with significant titles such as "Do not have Doubts" or as a whole, as well as the model of his parents' house, now shrunk to about a sixth of the size.

In the same year, Wurm was also seen with similar and completely new works such as the "Self -Portrait as a Empty Gurker" "Telekinetic Masturbator" belonging to the philosophers also in Groningen (Netherlands), Florence, Salzburg, New York and Beijing.

In 2011 we continued with headless figures in the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in Paris, with folding bed installations in the exhibition "I am Erwin Wurm" (and exactly this lettering as a exhibited work of art) to Copenhagen, with new "Self-portrait as a vinegar cucumber" and new "Narrow Houses" to Odense (also Denmark) and Dornbirn (Austria) Mysterious piece of furniture to Vienna ("beautiful living").

A “Narrow House” from Wurm was then presented effectively on one of the channels outdoors 54th Biennale of Venice

"Small Psychos Groups" after the Biennale in the Gemeentemuseum , he is welcomed by the critics as one of the most important contemporary artists. “Fat House” , which looks really fat in the Belgian Middelheim Museum of Antwerp, also has good luck

There are still a few "FAT" sculptures in which all the petty-bourgeois status symbols are "greased" or inflated, which have once replaced the wealth belly of once: in particular, a wide variety of sports cars and single-family houses, but sometimes still incredibly bloated men (when considering most people think of stock exchange brokers).

In 2012 there are more "gulps" , but they look like a gulp, "Knitted Walls" that just hang on the wall, magical "box" and rather bent "Drinking Sculptures" ( "Beauty Business" in the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, USA), all of these can also be seen in Dallas, including many new delicacies, among other things, among other things, among other things Around the topic of "Narrow House" .

Until the end of January 2013, Wurm was seen in the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, with a new installation and two "Melting Houses", which have really been melted quite far - however, he really does not rely on melting houses.

Now do you want the author to finally explain to you what Erwin Wurm makes for an art? Forgive, but I will do the T ..., first of all, of course, out of pure inability and then also out of pure respect for the artist.

I would have a lot of ideas for the implementation of which I would ask him if I would dare ... maybe one of the many so awkwardly clumsy politicians as "Melting Politician" , a mile emigrated to Russia as "Fat Freaky God" , the judge of a southern German OLG as a head -seeking philosopher or the board of a local association as "Narrow mind" ... on.

In any case, Erwin Wurm is probably a fairly good example for the artists, whose works you should look at a little longer and more comprehensively, because the look may not immediately grasp the whole imagination, all the humor, all the bizarre or all of cynicism.

At some point, however, he does this, and at some point it is better and better why Erwin Wurm has just received the Austrian State Prize, why he now moved up to 30th place on the ranking list of “buying art” and why the majority of critics line him up among the 20 most important artists worldwide .

If you have just read in rows of comments from any small spirits who think that something like Wurm can also get your little niece (who, incidentally, will never get the chance, small spirits do not let your children do an art): Look at Erwin Wurm himself and get an idea for yourself.

Lina cream

Passionate author with lively art interest

www. kunstplaza .de