HOEHME, Gerhard (Greppin, 1920 - Neuss, 1989)Gerard Hoehme

After fighting as a pilot in World War II, Gerard Hoehme started his artistic activity, influenced by his youthful awareness of the Bauhaus painting of Klee and Kandinski. In 1954, he held his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Facchetti in Paris. In the following years he held solo exhibitions in Hamburg, Berlin, Berne, Boston, Hannover, Lausanne, Milan, Munich, Paris, Rome and other major European and American cities. He participated in the I International Biennial of Graphic Art, Tokyo 1957, Documenta II, Kassel 1959. From 1954 to 1957 Gerhard Hoehme was president of the artists' association Gruppe 53. In 1960 he received a scholarship to the German Villa Massimo Academy in Rome. In Rome he met Alberto Burri, Cy Twombly, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Enrico Crispolti and Giulio Carlo Argan and became friends with the artists Piero Dorazio, Pino Pascali and the writer Paul Nizon. In 1960 he received the Villa Massimo Prize in Rome. In 1962 his texts Wegzeichen im Unbekannten (Signs in the Unknown) were published. In 1967 he wrote the manifesto Relationen.