“I am for a form of art that sees itself as one of the many means through which human society can be changed”
- Jörg Immendorff
Jörg Immendorff (1945 - 2007) was born in a Jewish family in Lower Saxony. He grew up as a witness of the destruction of the war and as German Jew in the wake of the Shoah, left with an intense feeling of inadequacy and anger, that later influenced his artwork, feeding his deep commitment to raise awareness about social and political matters throughout his life.
Similarly, to his contemporaries Georg Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz, Sigmar Polke and Anselm Kiefer, Immendorff's work is a product of Neo-Expressionism, marking a return to figuration, materiality and gestuality.
In 1963, Immendorff began his studies in Düsseldorf, where he was mentored by Joseph Beuys. He would soon be expelled for his radical and counter-cultural artistic practice which was a critical commentary of Nazism and the government establishment.
Even after Immendorff ’s expulsion, Beuys remained a guiding voice in his politically charged, Neo-Dadaist artwork and in his belief that an artwork has the capability to alter social norms.