Norbert Schwontkowski
Figurative Artist
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Norbert Schwontkowski (1949 – 2013, Bremen) is one of the most renowned and influential of German painters.
He applied his inexhaustible pictorial inventiveness both to fundamental questions of the human condition and to the absurdity of daily life.
He challenges artistic categorisation and his work falls between abstraction, realistic representation, and cartoon.
He made his own his paints from hand-ground pigments mixed with various materials to yield a range of textures. Schwontkowski also added metal oxides to the pigments, creating shimmering surfaces that continue to change over time.
His palette of pale earth tones, blacks and grays creates a muted, subdued atmosphere, while his carefully worked surfaces and minimal gestures demonstrate his sophisticated paint handling. Schwontkowski’s work is often described as playful yet melancholy, and naive while still mature.
Norbert Schwontkowski had regularly exhibited in galleries and public institutions throughout Europe since the late 1970s: Three by Chance, Kunsthalle Bremen (2024). A travelling retrospective was held in Kunstmuseum Bonn (2019) and Kunsthalle Bremen (2020), appropriately titled Some of My Secrets, and Kunstmuseum Den Haag (2020), under the name of Everyone Wants to Go Home. Other selected solo exhibitions include Kolumba Museum Cologne (2013), Kunstverein Hamburg (2013), Rubell Family Collection Miami (2006), Brandenburgische Kunstsammlungen Cottbus (2005), Kunsthalle Erfurt (2005), Kunsthalle Bremen (2004). Schwontkowski took part at the celebrated 4th Berlin Biennale Of Mice and Men curated by Maurizio Cattelan, Ali Subotnick and Massimiliano Gioni. Additionally, his work has been exhibited at the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamston, MA (2013); Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (2011); and the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2010).
His work was included in the 2005 Berlin Biennial, and is held in museums including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
He died in 2013 in Bremen, Germany.