German sculptor and installation artist Gunther Uecker, 85, has presented several of his works to the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.
They include 44 acrylic and oil paintings and prints (each 120cm by 80 cm), and 33 etudes, inspired from 30 ghazals (rhyming couplets) of the 14th century Persian poet Hafez. It took Gunther two years to complete the collection.
The works were on public display in Shiraz, Fars Province, at the mausoleum of Hafez on May 1 during an opening ceremony for the event attended by a large number of Iranian and German officials as well as art and literature aficionados.
Uecker had said then that he honored Hafez’s ghazals “with a ceremony of colors” and the emotions he gets from the poet’s verses “are unspeakable.”
The collection was later transferred to Tar-o-Pood Gallery in Shiraz, where the works were on a month-long display from May 2 until June 2.
The Shiraz event was titled ‘Tribute to Hafez’. Uecker’s works were then showcased at Imam Ali (PBUH) Religious Arts Museum in Tehran for another month and also in Dusseldorf, Germany, before they were donated by him to the TMoCA.
Fascinated by Asian Culture
Uecker is said to be one of the most famous German artists since World War II. His works include paintings, objects d’art and installations as well as stage designs and films.
He is mostly interested in the eastern European avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, while at the same time is fascinated by Asian cultures and their ideas. His works can be seen in collections and at large fairs across the world.
Uecker’s artistic creativity reached a climax in 2000 with a prayer room he designed for the rebuilt Reichstag historical edifice in Berlin. He has participated in many exhibitions, including Documenta 4, Kassel, Germany (1968), the Venice Biennale (1970), and numerous solos, including one at the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf (1983), a retrospective at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich (1990), and another solo show at the Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany (2010).
His first exhibition in Iran was held in 2012 at TMoCA, which was titled ‘Injuries and Connections’.
Gunther Uecker is among the senior members of Zero, a group of artists founded in 1957 by German artists Heinz Mack, 84 and Otto Piene (1928-2014) wanting to create an international art movement.
