Tilman
1959
(ITALY)
GERMAN
Born in Munich, Germany, Tilman is an abstract artist and curator. His work includes paintings, built environments, and stacked and layered wall and floor-based objects.He is a founder and current curatorial advisor of Dolceacqua Arte Contemporanea (d.a.c.) in Dolceacqua, Italy, and was a founder and former Chief Curator of the Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art (CCNOA) in Brussels, Belgium. Tilman lives and works in New York City and Dolceacqua, Italy.
Education
Tilman graduated from the Munich University of Applied Sciences and Design in 1978, and studied under Günter Fruhtrunk and Hans Baschang at the Munich Academy of Visual Art from 1981 to 1985.
Technique
Tilman creates a range of aesthetic objects, including paintings, drawings, prints, three-dimensional wall hangings, floor objects, floor-wall objects, and built environments. His paintings incorporate various mediums including paint, lacquer and crayons, and integrate various surfaces including vellum, MDF and aluminum. His three-dimensional wall hangings on MDF and aluminum hang flat on the wall, offering a primary front plane, while also creating new spatial possibilities beyond that plane. His works on vellum propose a similar visual arrangement of space, creating compositions of color and form that interact with light to re-order the visual environment. His technique addresses ways of seeing and perception, engaging the viewer to investigate beyond the surface.
Inspiration
Tilman is inspired by the traditions of Concrete Art and Minimalism. The objects he creates use form and color to interpret light and space, engaging the curiosity of viewers. As an active participant in his visual surroundings, his natural curiosity leads him to notice forms, compositions, colors and other sensory impressions occupying public spaces. These concrete elements of the common visual world then take on a new, non-objective presence in his mind. He later interprets these found visual elements into made concrete objects through a reductive process, eliminating what is not necessary and allowing the essence of his findings to manifest anew
Collections
Artworks by Tilman are included in numerous private and institutional collections, including those of Deutsche Bank, Pfizer, Teachers Insurance, The New York Public Library and the Musée d’art Moderne, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Exhibitions
Tilman has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia, Australia, and in the US. He received a major mid-career survey exhibition of his work at Kunstnernes Hus (The Artists’ House) in Oslo, Norway, in 2006.His work has been featured in multiple major publications such as ARTnews an Artnet magazine.
This Week's Pick of Artworks to Collect - Abstract Drawings!
An indelible dilemma survives our times: are drawings - and to which extent - artworks in their own right or do they belong to an exploratory and even auxiliary form as they are absorbed in larger...
Read more
Why Small Paintings Can Make a Big Impression on Your Abstract Art Collection
The trend of large, loud and largely unsellable paintings, dubbed festival art by an American art critic Peter Schjeldahl, dominated art fairs for two decades - stretching throughout the 90s to ea...
Read more
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Pays Homage to the American Minimal Art
The legacy of American Minimal art is on view in Monumental Minimal, at the Paris Pantin location of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. The exhibition includes more than 20 objects created by six of the mos...
Read more
Getting the Most in the Simplest Form - Anne Truitt at Matthew Marks
A rare exhibition of paintings by Anne Truitt is currently on view at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York. Truitt (1921 – 2004) is mostly known for her sculptures, or structures as they are most oft...
Read more
The Secret of Making the Perfect Pastel Drawing
Pastel is a versatile word. It can be a noun when referring to a pastel, a general term for a pastel drawing or a pastel painting. It can also be a verb, as in to pastel something, meaning the act...
Read more
What is Hidden Inside an Abstract Design of a Painting
We have written before about the elements of art, such as line, color, texture, etc. Design principles are what we use to describe the ways those elements collaborate within a visual composition. ...
Read more
The Complex Minimalism of Robert Mangold
The magic in art is personal. It begins when someone is transformed through an aesthetic experience, and becomes inspired in turn to transform the world. Many viewers perceive the art of Robert Ma...
Read more
The Abstract in Jasper Johns Artwork
Jasper Johns artwork can be understood as being abstract, although his approach is usually descibed as representational. The artist is usually associated with the The Walker Art Center in Minneapo...
Read more
Frank Stella - the Art of Object
Many bemoan the apparent oncoming death of printed books. But the function of books is to tell stories, and apparently screens and disembodied voices tell stories just as well. Since books as obje...
Read more
Minimalist Sculpture as the Pristine Contemplation of Space
Is Minimalist sculpture defined by a set of rules? Does a Minimalist sculpture’s success have to do with its own properties, or does it depend on how it interacts with its surroundings? The art cr...
Read more
From pencil to ink, charcoal to pastel, drawings represent an important part of our offering at IdeelArt. But, what is drawing actually? Though most often associated with figurative artistic movem...
Read more
Today's Artists Inspired by Rothko's Color Field Painting Style
Silence is so accurate.-Mark Rothko As we seek out today’s inheritors of Mark Rothko’s iconic color field painting style, we can’t only search for work that looks similar to his. We must also purs...
Read more
An Art Buyer's Practical Guide to Color Theory
Color is to art is like flavor is to cuisine. The range of possible manifestations of both qualities is so vast it seems infinite. We can only describe colors and flavors in terms of our experienc...
Read more
