Horst Antes

Horst Antes lives and works in Wolfartsweier and Sicellino

Horst Antes was born on 28 October 1936 in Heppenheim an der Bergstraße. From 1957 to 1959 he studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe under HAP Grieshaber. At the age of 23, the young artist was awarded the Prize of the Hanoverian Economy (Pankofer Prize, Baden Baden). In 1960 he received a scholarship from the Kulturkreis im Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, Cologne. He creates his first head painting in profile, "Kopf mit roter Kappe" (Head with red cap). Horst Antes was awarded the art prize "Junger Westen" and the "Prix des artistes" at the II Biennale des "juenes artistes", Paris in 1961. In that year he married Dorothée Großmann. He then lived and worked for a year in Florence with a scholarship from the Villa Romana. He then went to Rome for a year to the Villa Massimo. From 1965 to 1968 Horst Antes taught at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe (1967-68 as a visiting professor). In 1966 he took part in the XXXIII Venice Biennale for the second time, received the Unesco Prize for Painting and the second scholarship of the Aldegrever Society, Münster. Horst Antes' interest in indigenous peoples first took him to various Indian reservations in the USA in 1972. The Falklands War in 1982 shocked the artist deeply and led to a change in his subjects: the "head figure" disappeared from the pictorial work and the first house paintings were created.




In 1984 he became a professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, where he taught until 2000. In 1985 he moved into a studio in Berlin. He was awarded the Hans-Molfenter-Prize of the city of Stuttgart in 1989 and in 1991 he received both the Grand Prize of the XXI Sao Paulo Biennial and the Cultural Prize of the State of Hesse. His first major retrospective took place in 1993 at the Haus der Kunst Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich and at the von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal (1994). In 1996 he founded the "Horst Antes Study Foundation", which is committed to the preservation of the various study collections and to the promotion of non-academic art. In 2004/5 there was a travelling exhibition in Japan entitled "Horst Antes and Kachinas" with stops in Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Itami City Museum of Art, Iwate Museum, Iwaki City Art Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura/Hayama. In 2006, Kunsthalle Würth showed a solo exhibition entitled "And tomorrow I might paint a picture". In 2013, there was an extensive presentation at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin. Horst Antes was invited to participate in the documenta three times (1964, 1968 and 1977) and is represented in many public collections. He lives and works in Sicellino.