Rebecca Horn

Rebecca Horn, born 1944 in Michelstadt, Germany, since the early 1970s has developed an autonomous, internationally renowned position beyond all conceptual, minimalist trends. Her work ranges from sculptural environments, installations, drawings, paintings to video and performance and manifests abundance, theatricality, sensuality, poetry, feminism and body art. While it was mainly through her early performances that she explored the relationship between body and space, in her later work, the human body was replaced by kinetic sculptures. The element of physical danger that comes from machines, knives, and electricity is a constant theme throughout the artist’s work.

Having studied in Hamburg and London, from 1989, Rebecca Horn herself taught at the University of the Arts in Berlin for almost two decades. In 1972, she was the youngest artist to be invited by curator Harald Szeemann to present her work in documenta 5. Her work was later also included in documenta 6 (1977), 7 (1982) and 9 (1992) as well as in the Venice Biennale (1980; 1986; 1997; 2022), the Sydney Biennale (1982; 1988) and as part of Skulptur Projekte Münster (1987; 1997). Throughout her career she has received numerous awards including Kunstpreis der Böttcherstraße (1979), Arnold-Bode-Preis (1986), Carnegie Prize (1988), Kaiserring der Stadt Goslar (1992), ZKM Karlsruhe Medienkunstpreis (1992), Praemium Imperiale Tokyo (2010), Pour le Mérite for Sciences and the Arts (2016) and, most recently, the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize (2017). A first mid-career retrospective of her work was organized in 1993 by the Guggenheim Museum, New York, traveling to the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Nationalgalerie Berlin, Kunsthalle Wien, Tate Gallery and Serpentine Gallery, London, and the Musée de Grenoble. A second retrospective was presented at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2005. Another retrospective took place at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin in 2006. In 2019, two major exhibitions of her work took place simultaneously at Centre Pompidou Metz and at Museum Tinguely in Basel. Rebecca Horn lives and works in Bad König, Germany.