March 2 – May 13, 2007
MKM Museum Küppersmühle for Moderne Art

Peter Brüning (1929, Düsseldorf – 1970, Ratingen), painter and object artist, combines the abstract and realistic, the gestural and conceptual, Art Informel and Pop Art. Ostensibly the artist lends himself to contradictory characterisations which on closer scrutiny are revealed as a commitment to his own time and artistic rigour – and hence Brüning is quintessentially still, and recurrently, highly topical.

As one of the Germany’s most pre-eminent artists of the 50s and 60s, he succeeded until his premature death in creating a prodigious and groundbreaking body of work over a period of 17 years, which ranges from the gestural paintings of his Art Informel period, the emblematic “traffic landscapes” to installations and object art. At the same time, a consistent and logical line of development can be discerned and it is the objective of this exhibition to illustrate this artistic development with all the attendant hiatuses, transitions and both logical and surprising outcomes.

The uniqueness of the artist Peter Brüning lies in his early appreciation that the Art Informel style was limited in scope and had to be deconstructed and transposed into another artistic language. The degree to which he succeeded in achieving this objective can now be viewed by visitors to MKM from the extensive material on show.