The Berlin gallery Sprüth Magers sent out a memorial email today on the occasion of the death of the artist Walter Dahn. Sprüth Magers had represented the artist since the early 1990s.
Image above: Walter Dahn, photo: Andrea Stappert.
Initially known as a founding member of the Mülheimer Freiheit and a pioneer of “Wild Painting” in the late 1970s and early 1980s, his notion of painting soon expanded to media such as silkscreen, photography, assemblage, and installation, all of which synthesized myriad aspects of contemporary (pop) culture from art to music to politics and beyond. In all this, music was key.
Dahn’s deep connection both to its history and to its current developments found its way into his visual works; he was a musician himself too, releasing records with a number of bands.
In New York and Cologne in the 1980s, he formed close friendships with George Condo and Richard Prince. But the key art figure for him was Joseph Beuys, whose class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf he joined at the age of just seventeen.
Beuys’ expansive artistic vision, encompassing both sociopolitical and social dimensions, exerted a profound influence on Dahn, for whom work, life, and the social ideals of his art were inextricably linked. His goal was to never succumb to ideology—to not be restricted by any style, to always preserve an openness in his approach.
This core attitude as well as his generous and collaborative spirit were reflected in Dahn’s deep passion for teaching: For two decades, he was a professor at the Braunschweig University of Art, where he influenced a generation of younger artists.
With the loss of Walter Dahn, we bid farewell to a major artist whose wide-ranging work was in many respects visionary. Earlier this year, he and his band Die Partei released their final album. His show Have Love Will Travel, currently on view at Haus Mödrath, was a project particularly close to his heart. Knowing that he was able to witness the exhibition and design its accompanying catalogue is a source of deep joy and comfort.6
