Biography

Mark Lammert (born on September 30, 1960 in Berlin), is a German painter, illustrator, graphic artist and stage designer.

After finishing his degree at the Berlin Kunsthochschule, he becomes a master scholar at the Akadmie der Künste. Over the following years he receives various scholarships from different institutions including the Stiftung Kunstfonds (1996) and the Centre Les Récollets, Paris (2003). In 1998, he wins the graphics prize at the Art Dresden trade fair and in 1999 he is awarded the Käthe Kollwitz prize by the Akademie der Künste. In 2002, the Preussische Seehandlung presents him with the Eberhard Roters scholarship for painting. Lammert is a professor of painting and drawing at the Berlin University of Arts since 2011 and a member of the Academy of Arts since 2015.

Alongside individual exhibitions – including the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (1999), Les Subsistances, Lyon (2002) and in the Centro de Arte Moderna, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2005) – he also takes part in numerous exhibitions of German art, including Deutschlandbilder [Pictures of Germany], Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (1997), Kunst in der DDR [Art in the GDR], Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2003), Art of Two Germanys, County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2009), Travelling the World. Artworks from the ifa Collection, 1949 to the Present, Karlsruhe, Moscow and more (2013), and Geist und Form. Ten Painters, Bloomington/Indiana (2013). His works are represented in various public and private collections in Germany and around the world, including the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation’s Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, the State Art Collection, Dresden, the Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt am Main as well as the Ann and Werner Kramarsky Collection, New York.

In his early years, Lammert works in painting, drawing and graphics in parallel, posing conceptual questions of these media, which often lead to different series – the group portraits PEOPLE WAITING (1983–1988) and the series FLESH (1985–1988) and WHITE NUDES (1988–1989) are all created during his time as a student and master scholar. The principle, which can be seen here, of reducing the human form to fragments is carried forward into his large-format series of pictures ALLIED (1994–1996), which he paints in shades of red on the reverse side of old maps. A fascination with cartographic processes is also reflected in his drawings, which he increasingly covers with an intricate web of fine lines. In addition to this, he develops a comprehensive oeuvre of prints; he often includes scientific figures in these compositions, which – as in his series COLUMN (1998–2002) – are presented in juxtaposition with his own drawings in a collage-like form.

From 1998, Lammert primarily turns his attention to smaller picture formats for his paintings, which he arranges in changeable, large-scale tableaux for exhibitions. In doing so, the picture blocks ARM-CHEST (1998–1999), COVERS (1998–1998), THORAX (1998–2000), WHITE (2001–2003) and RESURRECTION (2010–2013), painted in oil on both canvas and wood, are set against light backgrounds and PASSION 2001–2002), BLACK (2002–2004) and MANOEUVRE (2005–2008) are set against dark backgrounds. They explore the different relations between figure and base as the fragmented figures are added in layers to the painted surface. In his series FLOATERS (2005–2009), Lammert renders this attempt at differentiation and gradation of coloured layers against colourful backgrounds.

Since the eighties, Lammert collects material in workbooks, creating a parallel workspace that depicts the political context in which his work is created. These books are filled with written excerpts from various different theoretical and literary texts alongside newspaper extracts, photographs and drawings. Visual and verbal material become interwoven with one another and set into correspondence. In his written works, titled CONTOURS (2004, 2013), this hand-written copying method is used to create pictures that are both text and drawing simultaneously; it is only through the spaces within the blocks of text that shapes and figures are uncovered. The boundary between drawing and painting is also seen to dissolve progressively in his BONES series (2006–2007), inspired by the coloured compounds in the zoological collection of the Musée Fragonard in Paris. The series EPIDAURUS (2009), which can be seen as questioning the origins of drama, is also characterised by these colourful, drifting panels, first mapped out by the underlying lined pattern.

Following his collaboration with Heiner Müller, Duell-Traktor-Fatzer, Berliner Ensemble (1993), and Germania 3, Berliner Ensemble (1995), Lammert continues to work on theatre sets for plays, opera and dance – for Jean Jourdheuil et al., Germania 3, Centro Cultural de Bélem, Lisbon (1997), La Finta Giardinera, State Opera House, Stuttgart (2003), and Michel Foucault, chose dites, choses vues, Festival d’Automne, Paris (2004), for Dimiter Gotscheff et al., The Persians, Deutsches Theater, Berlin (2006) and Epidaurus, Greece (2009), Prometheus, Volksbühne, Berlin (2009), and Oedipus the King, Thalia Theater, Hamburg (2009), for Volker Schlöndorff The Light that Shines in the Darkness, Berlin/Moscow (2009), and for Reinhild Hoffman Exercices du silence, Staatsoper, Berlin (2011), all of which share not only similarity in their sculptural shapes, but also in their picturesque expressiveness.