A German artist known for painting and sculpture of World War II political themes and especially for his active and controversial promotion of non-traditional art, Jorg Immendorff was born in Bleckede, Germany and studied at the Dusseldorff Art Academy with Joseph Beuys.

As a student Immendorff was expelled because of his strong protest of academic art and participation in Neo-Dada performance art called Lidl. However, this rejection only intensified his determination, and he became a life-long promoter of artists as social activists.

In the 1970s, he returned to canvas painting as a Neo Expressionist aligned with a group called Neue Wilde. His signature work is a series known as Café Deutschland, which was "symbol laden cafe scenes that he began in 1978, which were populated historical and political figures." In 1984, he opened his own cafe in Hamburg to give his artist contemporaries a place to gather and exhibit their work.

He did a portrait of Gerhard Schroder, center-leftist Chancellor of Germany whom he much admired, and in spring of 2007, gave the painting to the German chancellery.

From 1968 to 1980, Jorg Immendorf was a high-school art teacher in Dusseldorf, and in 1996, he became Professor of Art at the Duseldorff Art Academy, the institution that had earlier rejected him.

He died in the summer of 2007.

Source:
Editor, "International News", ARTnews, July 2007, p. 100

Jörg Immendorff decided in 1963 to study stage art under Teo Otto at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, but after three semesters he switched to the art class of Joseph Beuys. The artist first came to attention because of his political action art, which he carried out together with the neo-Dadaist action project ®LIDL¯. The provocative actions led to his expulsion from the academy.

In addition to his work as a freelance artist, Immendorff became involved as an art teacher at the Dumont-Lindemann-Hauptschule in Düsseldorf from 1968-1980. His art addressed the criticism of politics and society, which he processed in representational works such as the cycle of paintings ®Café Deutschland¯. In 1976, together with A. R. Penck, who came from the GDR, he founded the "Immendorff-Penck Collective," which took up the German-German question. The border crossing between West and East became formative for his artistic identity.

In the 1990s, he was again a lecturer at the State Art Academy in Düsseldorf and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. He presented his works several times at the documenta in Kassel, and a portrait of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder for the Chancellor's Gallery in the Federal Chancellery is by his hand. The German campaigned vehemently for the fight against the nerve disease ALS, which he himself suffered from. Because of his protests and his rebellion against political and social grievances, Immendorf is considered one of the best-known contemporary German artists.

Jörg Immendorff was born in 1945 in Bleckede in Lower Saxony. He studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and at the beginning he created figurative paintings with socio-critical messages. Immendorff developed a new style of history paintings in Germany. In 1976 he took part at the Biennale in Venice. In the same year he formed a friendship with the German painter A. R. Penck, who at this time still lived in East Germany.

Jörg Immendorff is considered as one of the most important, contemporary German artists. He died in 2007 in Düsseldorf. (cko)