He is one of the most unusual contemporary artists: Jiří “Georg” Dokoupil has been inspiring the international art scene with new styles and painting techniques for decades.
Dokoupil, who was born in the Czech Republic and came to Germany with his parents at the age of 12, was one of the young, wild painters who conquered museums, the art market and the major exhibitions. From 1976 to 1978, Dokoupil studied art in Cologne, Frankfurt am Main and New York. Since 1980 he belongs to the Cologne artist group “Mülheimer Freiheit. ”
The extraordinary materials and techniques he uses are characteristic of Dokoupil’s works, which can be found among others in the art collections of the Centre Pompidou Paris, the Museum Ludwigs Cologne and the National Museum of Contemporary Art Seoul. Since the mid-1980s, he has renounced brushes as a painting tool and has resorted to other, sometimes quite unusual, utensils in the design of his work. Thus, he is the first and only painter in the world to blow the soap bubbles himself on paper. The principle of randomness and colour selection play a decisive role here. Dokoupil never wanted to be assigned to a personal or fixed style. Thus, he did not develop a uniform style that immediately suggests his work. He plays with different styles and constantly invents new techniques with which he experiments excessively.
From 1983 onwards, Dokoupil worked as a teacher with visiting professorships at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, the Summer University of Amsterdam and the Gesamthochschule Kassel. As early as 1982, Dokoupil took part in the Venice Biennale, the “documenta” and the exhibition “Zeitgeist. ” He is also the winner of the Lovis Corinth Prize 2012. The prize is awarded to visual artists whose work originated in connection with contemporary art in Eastern Europe and in dealing with it, or reflects German art in the historical cultural landscapes of Germany. Dokoupil lives and works in Berlin, Prague, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro.
