23.08.2017
Neue Nationalgalerie
The painter Karl Otto Götz has died at the age of 103. On the occasion of his 100th birthday, in 2013/2014 the Staatliche Museen’s Nationalgalerie presented a comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work at the Neue Nationalgalerie.
‘K.O. Götz will be remembered as one of the most important German artists of the 20th century,’ says Udo Kittelmann, director of the Nationalgalerie.
K.O. Götz is considered a defining figure of post-1945 Art-Informal painting in Europe. Forceful, explosive brush strokes characterize his work, evidencing its rapid execution. Götz, who was born in Aachen in 1914, continued to paint with vigor, even in advanced age: he produced large-scale paintings until after the turn of the millennium. The major retrospective of K.O. Götz’s work, which took place in 2013/2014 in the Mies van der Rohe-designed Neue Nationalgalerie, included works dated between 1934 and 2010. From 1958 to 1979, Götz taught at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Among his students were Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Franz Erhard Walther, and the painter Rissa, whom Götz married in 1965.
With the loss of Karl Otto Götz, the art world loses a defining figure of the 20th century. The Nationalgalerie and its staff, as well as the public, will remember his paintings.