Albert Oehlen

Albert Oehlen is a German neo-expressionist painter born in Krefeld in 1954. He currently lives and works in Bühler.

Albert Oehlen studied at the School of Fine Arts in Hamburg. It is a pivotal period in its artistic, fruitful and rich construction. Surrounded by a group of friends, he paints tirelessly, discovers, projects, plans. The synergy of the group allows him to intensify his personal artistic production, but also collective, in particular with Martin Kippenberger. Together, they dare to go further, and push their limits. They are part of a certain generation of student artists who took a very critical look at the painting of the time. According to Oehlen, this artistic period was absolutely disastrous, the canvases were badly made and ridiculous, poor and without interest. The artist then goes against the trend, using only dark colors, oily textures, and distorting the lines so that they look "poorly painted". At the start of his career, his style was categorical, without nuance. From now on, the painter softens the gesture, making figurative elements appear here and there, favoring light tones and colors.

The challenging force of Albert Oehlen earned him association with the "Bad painting", a movement born in the United States and positioning itself against the traditional and conventional art of the 1970s. This artistic movement is designated in Germany by the term “New Fauves". We also speak of “trans-avant-garde" in Italy, and of “free figuration" in France. These different labels all hide the same idea: to challenge the too many constraints and conventions of modern art of the 1970s, which appear ostentatious and pompous. Albert Oehlen describes himself as an heir to modernism. Figuration finds a place at the heart of the canvas, and is juxtaposed with abstract elements. The split between pure abstraction and figuration is overcome. Les Nouveaux Fauves compensate for the lack of rooting in reality characteristic of modern art by returning to subjective emotions, forms and materiality. It is in this vein of post-modernism that the current work of the talented Albert Oehlen, a key figure on the German contemporary scene, fits.

Recognized artist on the European scene, Oehlen exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 2009, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and many others.

Albert Oehlen's fame translates into a substantial coast on the art market. In 2017, he was ranked among the nine German artists in the top 100 worldwide sales. The same year, his work "Selbstportät mit Palette" was sold at Christie's in London for the amount of £2,965,000.