Installation artist Rebecca Horn dies at the age of 80
Published: Sunday, Sep 8th 2024, 14:50
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Rebecca Horn, one of the most important contemporary artists, is dead. She died on Friday evening in Bad König in southern Hesse at the age of 80, as Peter Raue, Chairman of the Moontower Foundation founded by Horn, told the German Press Agency. It was first reported by the art magazine "Monopol".
Horn, honored with the highest awards, created a multifaceted and multi-layered oeuvre. It includes sculptures, installations and performances as well as literary texts, screenplays and the direction of films and operas.
From Michelstadt into the world
Born in Hesse, she became famous for her magical art machines, in which she set objects such as suitcases, violins and tubes in mysterious motion. One of her best-known works is the "Turtle Sighing Tree", which emits plaintive sounds in many languages from its sound funnels.
Born in Michelstadt in the Odenwald in 1944, Horn studied in Hamburg and London. Until 1981, she lived and worked mainly in New York, later also in Paris. In 1989, she took up a professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts. Since 2007, she has been converting her family's former factory in the Odenwald into an art center.
The Guggenheim Museum in New York presented a retrospective of her work in 1993, which later toured Europe. Leading international institutions have dedicated solo exhibitions to her. In 2010, Horn was honored for her life's work with the Japanese Praemium Imperiale, one of the most prestigious art prizes in the world. In 2012, the Moontower Foundation, based in Bad König in the Odenwald, was established to maintain her legacy and support younger artists and musicians.
Moontower Foundation and State of Hesse with long-term cooperation
In 2017, the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg hosted the show "Hauchkörper als Lebenszyklus". Horn was unable to attend the opening due to illness following a stroke two years earlier. The jury of the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize honored her as "one of the most unconventional, innovative and experimental artists in Germany."
According to the Moontower Foundation, exhibitions followed in 2019 at the Tinguely Museum Basel and the Center Pompidou-Metz in France as well as the Kunstforum in Vienna. An exhibition of her work can be seen at Haus der Kunst in Munich until October of this year.
In March of this year, the Foundation and the state of Hesse agreed on a long-term collaboration to mark Horn's 80th birthday. The first phase comprises the long-term loan of a group of sculptures to the Museum Wiesbaden and the creation of a catalog raisonné of her sculptures.
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