Jörg Immendorff (June 14, 1945 – May 28, 2007) was one of the best known contemporary German painters; he was also a sculptor, stage designer and art professor.

Life and work

Immendorff was born in Bleckede, Lower Saxony. When he was 11 years old, his father left the family. This traumatic experience has been used to explain Immendorff’s later feelings of inadequacy and emotional remoteness.[1] He visited the boarding School Ernst-Kalkuhl Gymnasium as a student.

He studied at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf) under Joseph Beuys. The academy expelled him because of some of his (left-wing) political activities and neo-dadaist actions. From 1969 to 1980, he worked as an art teacher at a public school, and then as a free artist, holding visiting professorships all over Europe. In 1989, he became professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and in 1996 he became professor at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf — the same school that had dismissed him as a student.

Immendorff’s paintings are sometimes reminiscent of surrealism and often use irony and heavy symbolism to convey political ideas. He named one of his first acclaimed works "Hört auf zu malen!" ("Stop painting!") He was a member of the German art movement Neue Wilde. Best known is his Cafe Deutschland series of sixteen large paintings (1977–1984) that were inspired by Renato Guttuso’s Caffè Greco; in these crowded colorful pictures, Immendorff had disco-goers symbolize the conflict between East and West Germany. Since the 1970s, he worked closely with the painter A. R. Penck from Dresden (in East Germany).

He created several stage designs, including two for the Salzburg Festival. In 1984, he opened the bar La Paloma near the Reeperbahn in Hamburg St. Pauli and created a large bronze sculpture of Hans Albers there. He also contributed to the design of André Heller’s avant-garde amusement park "Luna, Luna" in 1987. Immendorff created various sculptures; one spectacular example is a 25 m tall iron sculpture in the form of an oak tree trunk, erected in Riesa in 1999.

In 1997, he won the best endowed art prize in the world, the MARCO prize of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey, Mexico. In the following year he received the merit medal (Bundesverdienstkreuz) of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was a friend and the favorite painter of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who chose Immendorff to paint the official portrait of Schröder for the Bundeskanzlerleramt. The portrait, which was completed by Immendorff’s assistants, was revealed to the public in January 2007; the massive work has ironic character, showing the former Chancellor in stern heroic pose, in the colors of the German flag, painted in the style of an icon, surrounded by little monkeys.[3] These "painter monkeys" were a recurring theme in Immendorff’s work, serving as an ironic commentary on the artist’s business.