Rupprecht Geiger Biography - Infos for Sellers and Buyers

Rupprecht Geiger

München 1908 - München 2009

Rupprecht Geiger was born as the only child of painter and printmaker Willi Geiger in Munich in 1908. Geiger spent his childhood in Munich and the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. In 1924 his family went to Spain for a year, where Geiger attended the 'Colegio aleman' in Madrid. During this time, Geiger accompanied his father on trips to the Canary Islands and to Morocco. At that time Geiger began to draw and paint watercolors. One year after his return from Spain in 1926, the artist entered the architectural class of Eduard Pfeiffer at the Munich 'Kunstgewerbeschule', from which he graduated as an architect in 1935. He then spent half a year in Rome together with his father. Until he was drafted to serve in the military and sent to the Russian front in 1940, Geiger worked at an architect's bureau in Munich. During that time he painted landscape watercolors in dark shades. In 1942 Rupprecht Geiger returned to Germany for a short time. Subsequently his father helped him to get a job as a war painter in the Ukraine After the war, the artist returned to Munich. In 1948 his first abstract picture was exhibited at the 'Salon des Réalistes Nouvelles' in Paris. One year later Geiger founded the 'ZEN 49' group of artists together with Baumeister, Matschinsky-Denninghoff and Winter. In the 1950s Geiger found his typical style. He incorporated the futurist style of the sixties influenced by space research in his abstract and colorful compositions. In 1959 and 1977 the artist participated in document. In 1962 he stopped working as an architect to focus entirely on painting. In 1965 Rupprecht Geiger was appointed professor at the Düsseldorf academy, where he subsequently worked until 1976. In 1982 the artist became a member of the Munich 'Akademie der Schönen Künste'. In 1987 he received an important commission to produce the sculpture 'Gerundetes Blau' for the Munich cultural center 'Gasteig'. His abstract color compositions make Rupprecht Geiger one of the most important exponents of color field painting in Germany. Geiger dies on Dec. 6th 2009 in Munich.