Ulrich Erben Biography
ULRICH ERBEN (1940) Ulrich Erben was born in Düsseldorf (Germany) in 1940 and at the age of sixteen he moved to Rome. Between 1958 and 1963 he studied in the art academies of Hamburg, Venice and Munich and subsequently in Berlin. Starting from landscapes and still lifes, his works increasingly focus on the link between geometry and nature, with particular interest in dimensions and spaces. In 1968 he painted his first white painting. This color is the symbol of neutral painting, free from associations and full of energy without figurative references. Ulrich Erben entered this artistic context with a personal exhibition at the Gallery m in Bochum in 1971, creating works with a generally white background, with superimpositions of a central geometric section created using a single colour, on which he subsequently insisted with several layers of white . Subsequently, while still predominantly using the color white, Erben adds simple shapes of saturated colors to this material, which becomes increasingly thicker, given by the broad gesture of the brushstroke. Rigid forms thus tend to dissolve more and more, going hand in hand with the intensification of the use of colour, particularly towards the end of the 1980s. The colors become mnemonic references, "colors of memory", often proposed on the canvas based on their mutual influence and attraction. Together with the colors, the light and dimensions of Ulrich Erben's paintings are also fundamental elements for involving the viewer: his paintings are large, quite large, but never taller than a man and wider than the span of his arms. The variable lighting, together with the different chromatic tones, crosses over his canvases generating perspective illusions and changing shades. Ulrich Erben participates in the main exhibitions dedicated to Analytical Painting, including, in 1973, “Times of perception”, Casa della Cultura, Livorno, “A possible future. New Painting”, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara, “Reflection on painting”, Palazzo Comunale, Acireale; “Geplante Malerei”, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, Galleria del Milione, Milan, 1974-75; “The colors of painting”, Istituto Italo Latino Americano, Rome, 1976. In 1977 he was invited to Kassel for “Documenta 6”. Also interested in light effects beyond the painting, he also works on mural projects and paintings, as in the exhibitions at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, at the Kunstverein in Cologne, at the Piltzer Gallery in Paris, at the Ginza Five in Tokyo. In recent decades he has exhibited, among other things, at the Kunsthalle in Mannheim (1984) and at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf (1990). In 2003 the Museum Wiesbaden dedicated a monograph to him. In 2010 he held an important solo exhibition at the Galleria Studio G 7 in Bologna, with which he has been collaborating for some time. At the Zappettini Foundation he exhibited in the group exhibitions “Pittura 70. Painting-painting and analytical abstraction” (Chiavari, 2004) and “The opaque surfaces of analytical painting” (Chiavari, 2009). In 1980 he became a professor of painting at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf and since 1992 he has been a member of the Figurative Art Section of the Akademie der Künst in Berlin. He currently lives and works in Düsseldorf.
