Jorg Immendorff 1945-2007

Jorg Immendorff, 61, German artist best known for his provocative Neo-Expressionist paintings, died of Lou Gehrig's disease on May 28 at his home in Dusseldorf. Immendorff was born in Bleckede, outside Hamburg. In 1963, he enrolled in the Dusseldorf Art Academy, where he studied with theater designer Tee Otto. After three terms, he transferred to the fine arts department to study with a newly appointed professor, Joseph Beuys. Along with classmates Sigmar Polke, Anselm Kiefer, Blinky Palermo and Katharina Sieverding, Immendorff thrived under Beuys's tutelage, although he reacted against the professor's mystical approach. Instead, he developed a singular form of agitprop and performance art to which he gave the absurdist label LIDL, evoking the sound of a baby's rattle. Immendorff conceived LIDL as an all-encompassing cultural and political realm under whose banner he organized political workshops and sit-ins during the late 1960s and early '70s.

In the late 1970s, he embarked on "Cafe Deutschland," a series of large Expressionist-tinged autobiographical paintings, for which he received international recognition [see A.I.A., June/July '05]. He exhibited widely throughout the 1980s and '90s, and won a number of prestigious awards, including Mexico's $250,000 MARCO Prize in 1997 and, the following year, Germany's highest cultural honor, the Bundesverdienstkreuz.

Despite his reputation as a political agitator early in his career, in recent years he circulated in German high society and befriended German chancellor Gerhard Schroder, whose portrait he painted. Privately, however, he continued to live on the edge. In one notorious incident in 2003, after he had been diagnosed with his fatal disease, he clashed with authorities who accused him of orchestrating an orgy with numerous prostitutes, and he was arrested for cocaine possession, receiving 11 months' probation and an approximately $200,000 fine. Nevertheless, Immendorff's status as an artist continued to grow at home and abroad. In 2004, a survey of his work was held at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. His most recent New York exhibition was at Michael Werner earlier this year [see review, p. 160].

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