Rebecca Horn RA, a pioneering German installation artist and filmmaker, has died (September 6th, 2024), aged 80. Her New York gallery, Sean Kelly, announced her death without stating a cause. Horn used body prosthetics and kinetic sculpture to express the mind-bending union of the human body with space and time in a way that captured the imagination of the international art world. Her imagery’s essence came from tremendous physical and technical functionality, often staging works within a particular site-specific space in mind.
Born on March 24th, 1944, in Michelstadt, Germany, Horn grew up under conditions after WWII that greatly influenced her art. She had first found escape in drawing from language and cultural barriers, for her Romanian governess had taught it to her; a visit to Japan at 18 introduced her to traditional ink wash painting, a drawing technique that for the first time showed her the possibility of studying the arts properly, which she did at Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. This was followed by a dramatic turn in her life when she contracted severe lung poisoning while working with fibreglass. Isolated in this sanatorium, Horn switched to softer materials; her art started assuming personal experiences of illness and recovery.
Horn’s six-decade career has seen her create groundbreaking performances, films, sculptures, and site-specific installations. Her kinetic sculptures with violins, pianos, and feathers spoke little of distinctions between the mechanical and organic; quotidian objects were transformed into metaphors in motion that mined history, myth, and the human condition.
Her ‘Unicorn 1970″ is one of the most important pieces from this time, containing a whole-body suit with a large horn protruding from the head. In the 1980s and 1990s, massive installations were created out of and dedicated to places charged with political and historical importance. With her kinetic sculptures, the artist releases and rediverts the weight of the past on these physical spaces: for example, in Concert in Reverse (1997) in Münster, where an old municipal tower turns out to be an execution site for the Third Reich: or in Vienna, with the Tower of the Nameless (1994), where she sets a monument to the refugees from Balkan states in the form of a tower with mechanically playing violins. In Weimar, Europe’s City of Culture 1999, the Concert for Buchenwald was composed on the premises of a former tram depot. The artist has layered 40 metre-long walls of ashes behind glass as archives of petrifaction. In Mirror of the Night (1998), at a derelict synagogue in Cologne, she uses the energy of writing textured to counter historical amnesia.
Horn exhibited her works throughout her life in some of the world’s most renowned institutions, such as Tate Modern in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Centre Pompidou in Paris. Born in Germany, she represented her country in many international exhibitions, among which are the Venice Biennale and Documenta. As a result of her work, she has been awarded many prizes, including the 2010 Premium Imperiale and the 2017 Wilhelm Lehmbruck prizes.
Rebecca Horn’s practice transcended time, leaving behind a body of work that continued to inspire and challenge. She has held solo exhibitions at institutions including the Museum Tinguely, Basel; Centre Pompidou-Metz, France; Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany; Tate Modern, London; the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow; the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi; the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; MOCA, Los Angeles; the Neue National Galerie, Berlin; the Kunsthalle Wien; the Serpentine Gallery, London; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; the Kunsthaus Zürich; and Anthology Film Archives, New York, amongst others. In 2022, Horn presented work at the 59th Venice Biennale, in 1997 at the 47th Venice Biennale and at documenta nine and Five. The artist has received several awards that include the 2017 Willhelm Lehmbruck Prize, Lehmbruck Museum; the 2016 Ordre pour le mérite des Arts et des Sciences, France; the Grande médaille des arts plastiques from the Académie d’architecture de Paris, 2011; the 2010 Premium Imperiale Prize in Japan and the 1988 Carnegie Prize.
Horn lived and worked mainly in Germany.
Photo: Photo: Gunter Lepkowski, Berlin Courtesy Royal Academy London