1939-2011

Dieter Finke

Berlin-born sculptor and painter whose work was defined by a lifelong exploration of space, movement, and the relational interplay between the artwork and its environment. As the last master student of the renowned sculptress Renée Sintenis, Finke navigated a unique creative path between radical abstraction and a deeply personal, skeletal form of figuration. His career, spent largely between the isolated "island" of West Berlin and the avant-garde lofts of New York City, produced an oeuvre spanning ephemeral packing paper, modern Plexiglas, and monumental bronze.
Timeline
  • 1939 Born in Berlin.
  • 1945–1955 Schooling, with occasional interruptions, in bombed-out Berlin.
  • 1955–1958 Apprenticeship as decorator at Haus der Stoffe, Berlin
  • 1959 Sculpture class of Paul Dierkes at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HfbK), Berlin
  • 1959–1963 Works as a prop modeller at CCC Film Studios, Berlin
  • 1960–1965 Last master student of Renée Sintenis
  • 1964 Master Student degree.
  • 1965 Villa Serpentara Scholarship of the Academy of Arts, Berlin — residency in Olevano, Italy.

  • 1967 Receives the Georg Kolbe Award
  • 1968 Develops coloured plywood constructions that balance on a single point, based on principles of ship construction.
  • 1970 Begins formal work with acrylic glass, layering geometric forms to create spatial illusions in the plane.
  • 1973 Commissioned for the art decoration of the headquarters of the Federal Insurance Institute (BfA), Berlin

  • 1974 First trip to the US: four-month stay in New York and New Hampshire.
  • 1975 Increased focus on painting and canvas.
  • 1976 First solo exhibition Raum-Licht-Zeichnungen (Space-Light-Drawings) in the art space of collector Hermann Stober, Berlin.
  • Artist-in-Residence studio at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam,
  • 1977 Second trip to New York. Participation in the exhibition Berlin Now in Soho, New York. (Publication: Berlin Now: Contemporary Art, Goethe House, New York, 1977.)

    - Initially stays in the studio of performance artist Julia Heyward
    - Later stays with Gordon Matta-Clark and Jane Crawford in a loft building near Union Square.
    - Studio at P.S.1, Queens, NY, while living in an apartment of Bill Copley (CPLY) near the Café des Artistes on the Upper West Side.
    - Moves to a loft in Manhattan's Lower East Side, below pioneer video artists Dieter Froese and Kay Hines.

  • 1977–1978 Two stage installations for the Theatre for the New City, New York
  • 1978 Installation for a performance piece by Bill Copley and Viola Stephan at the Brooke Jackson Gallery Iolas
  • 1980 Exhibition of recent paintings and New York objects at the Kutscherhaus, Berlin-Kreuzberg.
  • 1982 Exhibition of large-scale paintings on canvas at Deplana Art Hall, Berlin.
  • 1983 Refurbishes a studio in an old Catholic orphanage in Manhattan's East Village

  • 1988 Casts the first paper tiger in bronze at the Hermann Noack Foundry, Berlin.
  • 1989 Wooden guardian structures at Galerie Georg Nothelfer, Berlin.

    - Completes commission for Berlex Laboratories Inc., NJ, USA

  • 1990 Exhibition of wooden sculptures at Galerie im Kutscherhaus, Berlin.
  • 1992 First exhibition dedicated solely to bronze sculpture,Galerie Michael Stübler, Hanover.
  • 1993 Exhibition of painted bronze and wooden sculptures at Stiftung Starke, Berlin. Artist-in-Residence.
  • 1995 Exhibition of bronze sculptures at the gallery of the Hermann Noack Foundry, Berlin.
  • 1998 Exhibition at Galerie Michael Stübler, Hanover.
  • 1999 Sculptures at Galerie Noack, Berlin.
  • 2000 Solo exhibition Lost and Found — paintings, bronze and wooden sculptures — in four Mexican institutions: Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca; Museo del Desierto, Saltillo; Museo Metropolitano de Monterrey. Catalogue: The Return of the Panther!, Berlin Press
  • 2009 Major career retrospective Carte Blanche at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (GfZK), Leipzig, with major publication. Initiated by Berlin collector Leon Janucek; curated by Barbara Steiner.

  • 8 May 2011 Died in Berlin.
Solo Shows
Group Shows
  • 1970 Galerie Loeper, Hamburg (Plexiglas objects)
  • 1977 Berlin Now, Soho, New York
  • 1991 Fluxeum, Wiesbaden
  • 1996 Willy-Brandt-Haus, Berlin (in cooperation with Galerie Tammen & Busch)
  • 1998 Städtische Galerie Kubus, Hanover — 25 Jahre Michael Stübler (group show)
  • 2000 Harlekin Art, Michael Berger, Wiesbaden
  • 2002 Genthiner 11, Kunstverein Genthin e.V., Berlin
  • 2005 XII. Salão de Arte, Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, Brazil
  • 2008 Proceeding, First Sound Gallery, Beijing, China
Publications
  • 1977 Berlin Now: Contemporary Art, Goethe House, New York
  • 1977 Dieter Finke: Berliner Künstler der Gegenwart, No. 18, n.b.k. Berlin
  • 1982 Maler in Berlin, Volker Diehl / Roland Hagenberg
  • 1992 Dieter Finke: Bilder, Zeichnungen, Skulpturen, Vol. 9, Ed. Stübler
  • 2000 The Return of the Panther!, Berlin Press
  • 2009 Dieter Finke, GfZK Leipzig Retrospective Catalogue
1939–1965 CLASSICAL FOUNDATION

1939–1965: CLASSICAL FOUNDATION

This period encompasses Finke's childhood in the ruins of post-war Berlin and his intensive artistic training, which grounded him in classical anatomy and structural calculation. His early work at the CCC Film Studios taught him to capture the essentials of a form through the dramatic manipulation of light and shadow — a skill that would later define his translucent sculptures. Under the tutelage of Renée Sintenis, he began with animal sculptures before an abrupt shift to abstraction in 1962, driven by a desire to find the "spiritual, pure form" inspired by Brancusi.

Timeline

Timeline

  • 1939 Born in Berlin. (His father falls in the second year of the war.)

  • 1945–1955 Schooling, with occasional interruptions, in bombed-out Berlin.

  • 1955–1958 Apprenticeship as decorator at Haus der Stoffe, Berlin. His graduation piece — a window display featuring animal figures, shown at the Berlin trade fair halls — draws attention and earns him the unlikely recommendation to pursue an artistic education.

  • 1959 Accepted into the sculpture class of Paul Dierkes at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HfbK), Berlin (today UdK).

  • 1959–1963 Works as a prop modeller at CCC Film Studios, Berlin-Spandau, creating large-scale ornaments, dragons, lions and birds for oriental palace sets in productions such as Genghis Khan and Tiger of Bengal.
      In the art school studio, the sculptress Renée Sintenis leaves a note on one of his animal sculptures asking him to contact her. Due to her age and poor health, she can take on only one student.

  • 1960–1965 Becomes the last master student of Renée Sintenis, working in the full studio space of her class.

  • 1962 Abrupt shift from representational to abstract work; change of materials from wire and plaster to wood and stone. Destroys nearly all existing animal sculptures and models. Some pieces survive in the homes of friends.

  • 1964 Master Student degree.

  • 1965 Villa Serpentara Scholarship of the Academy of Arts, Berlin — residency in Olevano, Italy.
1966–1973 SPATIAL RESEARCH

1966–1973: SPATIAL RESEARCH

Having fully rejected representational art, Finke concentrated on relational works that interacted with light and movement. He experimented with plywood constructions based on shipbuilding principles — balancing on a single point — before turning to Plexiglas for its transparency and technological character. This material allowed him to create "volumes based on voids," whose appearance shifted with the viewer's position and the ambient light.

Group Shows

Group Shows

  • 1970 Galerie Loeper, Hamburg (Plexiglas objects)
Timeline

Timeline

  • 1967 Receives the Georg Kolbe Award for Sculpture — the first recipient to win with abstract sculptures.

  • 1968 Develops coloured plywood constructions that balance on a single point, based on principles of ship construction. On seeing a 1969 exhibition of George Rickey at the Haus am Waldsee — who had independently developed the identical technique for his steel sculptures — Finke turns toward finding new ways to create three-dimensional space from two-dimensional work.

  • 1970 Begins formal work with acrylic glass, layering geometric forms to create spatial illusions in the plane. Exhibition of Plexiglas objects at Galerie Loeper, Hamburg (group show).

  • 1973 Commissioned for the art decoration of the headquarters of the Federal Insurance Institute (BfA), Berlin: a kinetic light sculpture for the entrance area using coloured Plexiglas, indicating escalator direction — a work merging functional architecture with the illusion of movement. (Collaboration with architects Jan and Rolf Rave.)
      Occasional furniture design commissions in wood and steel.

  • 1973 Participation in Performances 2 — documentation of nine performances: Einhorn, Kopf-Extension, Weißer Körperfächer, Handschuhfinger, Federfinger, Gavin, Hahnenmaske, Bleistiftmaske, Kakadu-Maske; 16 mm, colour, sound, 38 min.; realisation: Helmut Wietz; with D. Finke, Gavin, Karin Halding, E. Mitzka. (Rebecca Horn Filmography 1973)
1974–1987 NEW YORK AND BERLIN

1974–1987: NEW YORK AND BERLIN

Finke's extended engagement with New York — beginning with a first visit in 1974 — brought him into contact with Gordon Matta-Clark, William Copley, and the wider downtown avant-garde. Confronted with urban density and an "obsessive desire for nature" among city dwellers, his interest in the animal was revitalized. He created ephemeral animal sculptures from packing paper and wood, intentionally left to decay, documented only through photography. His work also shifted toward large-scale gestural drawings on sailcloth, translating three-dimensional spatial thinking into two dimensions without conventional perspective.

Solo Shows

Solo Shows

Group Shows

Group Shows

  • 1977 Berlin Now, Soho, New York
Publications

Publications

  • 1977 Berlin Now: Contemporary Art, Goethe House, New York
  • 1977 Dieter Finke: Berliner Künstler der Gegenwart, No. 18, n.b.k. Berlin
  • 1982 Maler in Berlin, Volker Diehl / Roland Hagenberg
Timeline

Timeline

  •  1974 First trip to the US: four-month stay in New York and New Hampshire. Large-scale pastel-crayon drawings on packing paper, then on sailcloth and canvas. Spontaneous construction of large animal sculptures on Pine Island, New Hampshire from wood and packing paper — conceived neither for durability nor transport, preserved through photo-documentation. Primary working materials: extra-large rolls of brown packing paper and self-made oil-crayon blocks.

  • 1975 Increased focus on painting and canvas. First large-scale drawings with oil crayon and Japanese ink on sailcloth (working the ink stone directly on damp sailcloth); later, acrylic with broad brush or sponge; later still, mixed media with oil crayon and paper.

  • 1976 First solo exhibition Raum-Licht-Zeichnungen (Space-Light-Drawings) in the art space of collector Hermann Stober, Berlin.
      Artist-in-Residence studio at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, arranged through the Dutch painter Martin Engelman.

  • 1977 Second trip to New York. Participation in the exhibition Berlin Now in Soho, New York. (Publication: Berlin Now: Contemporary Art, Goethe House, New York, 1977.)
  • Initially stays in the studio of performance artist Julia Heyward (Duka Delight). (Heyward and Laurie Anderson had stayed at Finke's loft in Berlin the previous year.)
  • Later stays with Gordon Matta-Clark and Jane Crawford in a loft building near Union Square, recently bought and being renovated by a group of artists including Julian Schnabel, Les Levine, and Jeffrey Lew.
  • Subsequently given a studio at P.S.1, Queens, NY, while living in an apartment of Bill Copley (CPLY) near the Café des Artistes on the Upper West Side.
  • Moves to a loft in Manhattan's Lower East Side, below pioneer video artists Dieter Froese and Kay Hines. The huge loft (nearly 50m long) enables large-scale pictures and drawings.

  • 1977–1978 Two stage installations for the Theatre for the New City, New York:
  • The Ballad of the Seven Sleeping Brothers of China by Tadeusz Miciński (US premiere)
    Lovely Rita by Thomas Brasch (US premiere)

  • 1978 Installation for a performance piece by Bill Copley and Viola Stephan at the Brooke Jackson Gallery Iolas, 57th St., New York — with various figures from the Andy Warhol circle: Maxime de la Falaise, Shelly Dunn Fremont, Denise Boucher, Clarice Rivers. Videotaped by Vincent Fremont of Andy Warhol's Factory. Finke's installation: a large cube of double-mirrored Mylar foil — visible only from the darker exterior — so that performers inside the lit cube saw only themselves, while the audience outside could observe without seeing one another.
  • First work combining photography with plywood: three-dimensional mixed-media objects (plywood, mirror, photograph).

  • 1980 Exhibition of recent paintings and New York objects at the Kutscherhaus, art space of collector Hermann Stober, Berlin-Kreuzberg.

  • 1982 Exhibition of large-scale paintings on canvas at Deplana Art Hall, Berlin.

  • 1983 Refurbishes a studio in an old Catholic orphanage in Manhattan's East Village — formerly run by Salesian sisters, bought by a group of artists; the sisters remain in residence (chanting at 7am). Life now divided between New York and Berlin.
  •  Animals in both studios gradually multiply. Three-dimensional painted objects combine and juxtapose painting with sculpture: a backdrop for a sculpture, a figure beside a painting — creating stages or habitats for figures and animals. Works photographed in various combinations, then separated again. Increased sculptural work in plywood and wood, both representational and abstract.


1988–2011 BRONZE SYNTHESIS

1988–2011: BRONZE SYNTHESIS

In 1988, Finke achieved a technical breakthrough at the Hermann Noack Foundry: the casting of his fragile paper animals into bronze using a silicon-casting technique that preserved the fragmentary, perforated character of the originals. Heavy metal was made to carry the lightness and provisional quality of paper. This final period saw a synthesis of his architectural abstraction with a returned focus on the animal as guardian and witness — works of "stoic calm" that led to major retrospectives in Mexico and Germany.

Solo Shows

Solo Shows

  • 1988 M.J. Wewerka Galerie, Berlin
  • 1989 Galerie Georg Nothelfer, Berlin
  • 1990 Galerie im Kutscherhaus, Berlin
  • 1992 Galerie Michael Stübler, Hanover (first bronze exhibition)
  • 1993 Stiftung Starke, Berlin
  • 1995 Werkstattgalerie Hermann Noack, Berlin
  • 1998 Galerie Michael Stübler, Hanover
  • 1999 Galerie Noack, Berlin
  • 2000 Lost and Found, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City
  • 2002 Havelgalerie Ketzin, Berlin
  • 2005 Wall AG Headquarters, Berlin
  • 2009 Carte Blanche, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (GfZK), Leipzig
Group Shows

Group Shows

  • 1991 Fluxeum, Wiesbaden
  • 1996 Willy-Brandt-Haus, Berlin (in cooperation with Galerie Tammen & Busch)
  • 1998 Städtische Galerie Kubus, Hanover — 25 Jahre Michael Stübler (group show)
  • 2000 Harlekin Art, Michael Berger, Wiesbaden
  • 2002 Genthiner 11, Kunstverein Genthin e.V., Berlin
  • 2005 XII. Salão de Arte, Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, Brazil
  • 2008 Proceeding, First Sound Gallery, Beijing, China
Publications

Publications

  • 1992 Dieter Finke: Bilder, Zeichnungen, Skulpturen, Vol. 9, Ed. Stübler
  • 2000 The Return of the Panther!, Berlin Press
  • 2009 Dieter Finke, GfZK Leipzig Retrospective Catalogue
Timeline

Timeline

  • 1988 Casts the first paper tiger in bronze at the Hermann Noack Foundry, Berlin. Further bronze animals follow: rooster, panther, owl.

  • 1989 Wooden guardian structures at Galerie Georg Nothelfer, Berlin. Completes commission for Berlex Laboratories Inc., NJ, USA: a six-metre-tall wooden triptych with a bronze eagle.

  • 1990 Exhibition of wooden sculptures at Galerie im Kutscherhaus, Berlin.

  • 1992 First exhibition dedicated solely to bronze sculpture — mainly guardian figures and animals — at Galerie Michael Stübler, Hanover.

  • 1993 Exhibition of painted bronze and wooden sculptures at Stiftung Starke, Berlin. Artist-in-Residence.

  • 1998 Exhibition at Galerie Michael Stübler, Hanover.

  • 1999 Sculptures at Galerie Noack, Berlin.

  • 2000 Solo exhibition Lost and Found — paintings, bronze and wooden sculptures — in four Mexican institutions: Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca; Museo del Desierto, Saltillo; Museo Metropolitano de Monterrey. Catalogue: The Return of the Panther!, Berlin Press

  • 2002 Exhibition at Havelgalerie Ketzin (Gottfried Kupsch).

  • 2005 Exhibition at the headquarters of Wall AG, Berlin. Trip to Brazil; ephemeral sculptures created in the landscape.

  • 2008 Proceeding, First Sound Gallery, Beijing (group show).

  • 2009 Major career retrospective Carte Blanche at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (GfZK), Leipzig, with major publication. Initiated by Berlin collector Leon Janucek; curated by Barbara Steiner.
      Exhibition at the opening of the Gendarmerie, Joseph Laggner, Berlin-Mitte.

  • 2010 Exhibition at Galerie Gegenwart (Petra Köhler), Karlsruhe.

  • 2011 Art Karlsruhe (Galerie Gegenwart).

  • 8 May 2011 Died in Berlin.

Coda

In Retrospect

Dieter Finke remained a deliberately solitary figure, refusing gallery representation in favour of a relentless inquiry into the essence of movement and space. His legacy lies in the paradox he made material: heavy bronze given the quality of featherweight paper, and animal figuration inseparable from the abstract conditions of light, void, and time. Whether working in the landscape of Pine Island, on the stage of the Theatre for the New City, or in his studio in Charlottenburg, Finke's work constitutes an enduring bridge between classical European sculpture and the international avant-garde.