Dieter Appelt

Dieter Appelt is a contemporary German artist known for his black and white photographs which depict performances and sculptures of his own construction. Appelt’s works often exude a menacing air reminiscent to the Surrealist films of Luis Buñuel and Maya Deren. Born on March 3, 1935 in Niemegk, Germany, he studied singing and music at the he Mendelssohn Bartholdy Akademie in Leipzig, before taking photography courses under Heinz Hajek-Halke at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. During his early years in Berlin, the artist continued to be involved in music and performed in the choir of the city’s Opera. After a trip to Italy in 1976, Appelt started to focus his photographic attentions on his own body. Using the strange forms produced when he wrapped himself in plaster or gauze as subject matter. Over the following decades, other objects appeared within his performances and subsequent photographs, and his works gained international attention. He continues to live and work in Berlin, Germany. Today, Appelt’s works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others. Michel Frizot is Emeritus Director of Research at CNRS - EHESS, is a historian and theorist of photography. He teaches at Paris University 4, the Ecole du Louvre and EHESS. Roland Krischke (born 1967 in Heidelberg) is a German literary scholar and has been director of the Lindenau Museum Altenburg since 2016. Angela Lammert is head of special interdisciplinary projects in the Visual Arts Section at the Academy of Arts in Berlin and associate professor at the Institute for Art and Visual History of the Humboldt University of Berlin. She has organised numerous exhibitions and published widely on the art of the 19th to the 21st century. Dr. Benjamin Rux is curator of the Paintings and Prints and Drawings Collection at Lindenau-Museum Altenburg.