Biography
Günther Förg studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Karl Fred Dahmen from 1973 to 1979. The first solo exhibition took place in 1980 at the Munich gallery Rüdiger Schöttle. In 1984 he participated in the exhibition from here – Two months of new German art in Düsseldorf. Förg was represented at documenta IX in 1992. From 1992 to 1999 he taught at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe. In 1996 he was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize. From 1999 he held a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
Günther Förg was particularly influenced by architecture, which shaped his entire oeuvre. In particular, the Italian architecture of rationalism and buildings of modernism of the 20th century formed the subjects of his photographic works. These related, for example, to modernism in Moscow and Bauhaus architecture in Israel, with buildings from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and the IG Farben building in Frankfurt am Main.
Starting in the 1990s, he created large-format window and grid paintings on canvas or paper. With seemingly hastily placed brushstrokes and surfaces in broken colors, he created flickering effects and light atmospheres reminiscent of geometric structures of architecture, but also of characteristics of nature and landscape.
In 2007, under the title 3 Pictures – 30 Watercolors, specially created works of the Allgäu landscape were shown in the Museum of the City of Füssen (former Sankt Mang Monastery). In spring 2008, the Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg near Vienna showed in the exhibition Günther Förg. Back and Forth works by Förg together with the collection show Baselitz to Lassnig – Masterful Paintings with works by Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Maria Lassnig, Markus Lüpertz, Sigmar Polke, Arnulf Rainer and Gerhard Richter as well as an Immendorff exhibition, thus placing the works in the context of German painting.
In 2010, the Sinclair-Haus in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe showed works on paper from the period 2006 to 2010. Two years after Förg’s stroke, the Kunstraum Grässlin, St. Georgen in the Black Forest, showed an overview of his artistic work in 2012. Günter Förg died on his 61st birthday in Freiburg im Breisgau.