Klaus Heider
- Year of birth, place
- 1936, Göppingen, Germany
- Year of death, place
- 2013, Stuttgart, Germany
- Role at the ZKM
- in the collection
- Biography
- Klaus Heider was born in Göppingen in 1936. From 1957 to 1960 he studied Painting under Manfred Henninger at the Staatliche Akademie für bildende Künste, Stuttgart, and from 1960 to 1963 Printmaking under Friedrich Stabenau at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Berlin. In 1982 he won the Villa Massimo Prize, which enabled him to spend a year in Rome, and in 1983 a grant from the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Since 1983 Heider has been Professor of Painting at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Wirtschaft und Technik in Pforzheim. He lives in Bad Boll.
Klaus Heider embarked on his career as an artist, in the mid-1960s, as a print-maker, producing images characterized by perspective lines and chiaroscuro style that evoked a strong suggestion of three-dimensional structure. He often found a starting point in photographs that he then subjected to various forms of collage, décollage or frottage. From the start, light and transparency played an important part in Heider' s work. During the course of the 1970s, he started work as a sculptor, producing objects that were effectively glass spaces in the landscape and that were preceded by preparatory work in the form of prints as well as drawings. Stairs made of glass and transparent surfaces allowed a new perception of the size, spatial relations and character of the settings in which they stood. During the 1980s Heider started incorporating coloured linear elements into his work. Initially these were painted; later, in the form of neon tubes, they extended beyond the picture space and out into the surrounding space. Heider has also experimented in combining words and images, both in several books and in numerous works on paper. The titles he has give these are particularly significant.
Individual exhibitions (selection)
1965 Galerie Rall, Göppingen
1970 Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart
1975 Kunsthalle Tübingen
1977 Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden
1984 Galleria II Iougo di Gauss, Milan
1990 Ulmer Museum, Ulm
1991 Ernst Múzeum, Budapest
1994 »Im Rahmen einer Vorstellung«, Städtische Galerie Göppingen, subsequently at Galerie am Fischmarkt, Erfurt
1997 »Zeitbogen«, Galerie Hartl, Stuttgart
Group exhibitions (selection)
1969 »Junger Westen«, Städtische Kunsthalle Recklinghausen
1977 »I materiali del Linguaggio, artisti tedeschi a Firenze«, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence
1985 »Villa Massimo«, Orangerie, Kassel
1989 »5 German Artists«, Neville Sargent Gallery, Chicago
1990 »Deutsche Graphik des 20. Jahrhunderts«, Walker Hili Art Center, Seoul
1991 »Unter Null«, Museums of the City of Nuremberg and Centrum Industriekultur, Nuremberg
1996 »Abenteuer Kunst«, Städtische Galerie Göppingen
1997 »Magie der Zahl«, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
[Frauke Syamken, 1997]
