Raimund Girke was born in 1930 in Heinzendorf, in Germany’s Lower Silesia. He first studied at Hanover’s school of arts and crafts, the Werkkunstschule, from 1951 to 1952 and then at Düsseldorf’s art academy from 1952 to 1956. Girke painted his first abstract picture in 1954. He was initially greatly influenced by Art Informel and ZERO. His imagery is almost monochromatic, frequently concentrated on white alone, vividly or strongly structured, in constant movement and transformation. Girke is one of the young European artists who after the subjectivism of abstract realism sought new, reductive expressive possibilities. In 1966 he taught at the school of arts and crafts, and then from 1971 to 1996 he was a professor of painting at Berlin’s art school, the Hochschule der Künste. He participated in documenta 6 in 1977. Girke died in Cologne in 2002.
