The internationally renowned German curator Kasper König, a co-founder of Skulptur Projekte Münster and one of the most influential contemporary art exhibition-makers of his era, has died at the age of 80 in Berlin, the Museum Ludwig said in a press announcement. It did not give the cause of death.
König “shaped the art discourse of the last five decades like no other", according to the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, where he served as director from 2000 to 2012. The museum said it mourns “the loss of a generous, independent, humorous, energetic person who always carried us away with his enthusiasm for art".
Born in Mettingen, northwest Germany, in 1943, König started his career at the Galerie Rudolf Zwirner in Cologne as an intern. He met artists in the Rhineland including Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter—who later served as a witness at König’s wedding. In 1963, he went to London to work in commercial galleries and attended lectures at the Courtauld Institute.
In 1965, his work took him to New York, where he mainly lived until 1978 and gained an extensive international network; while working on European exhibition projects, he became acquainted with artists including Carl Andre, Hanne Darboven, Dan Graham, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman and Andy Warhol. At the age of 23, he curated his first exhibition—a Claes Oldenburg show in Stockholm. In 1968, he founded an art publishing company with his brother. Walther König’s firm today operates bookstores in most German cities as well as in museums.
The first Skulptur Projekte Münster, which König and Klaus Bussmann conceived as a way of familiarising the city’s population with modern and contemporary art, took place in 1977. Artists were invited to choose a spot in the city to install a sculpture. It has since taken place every 10 years, becoming an important facet of the cathedral city’s identity and international profile.
König returned to Germany to live full-time in 1978 and taught—first at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1984, then, from 1988, as a professor at the Städel art school in Frankfurt, which he led as the rector from 1989. In 1987, he founded Portikus in Frankfurt, a space affiliated with the Städelschule and dedicated to exhibiting young and emerging contemporary artists.
His son Johann König described growing up with his parents in Cologne in the 1980s in his autobiography: “Dan Graham lived with us for a while. We went on holiday with On Kawara. After a ‘Fluxus baptism', Nam June Paik was my godfather… I played football between an Andy Warhol Brillo Box, a Concetto spaziale bronze by Lucio Fontana and a Franz West sofa.”
König’s 12-year tenure at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne came at a critical time for the city, which was ceding its decades-long status as Germany’s art-world hub to Berlin. “With his knowledge, his judgment and his incorruptibility, he raised the Museum Ludwig to a world-class level again,” said Yilmaz Dziewior, the present director of the museum.
In 2003, König curated the Austrian pavilion for the Venice Biennale. Among the dozens of solo exhibitions he curated were shows devoted to Donald Judd, A.R. Penck, On Kawara, Richter, Gregor Schneider, Isa Genzken and Wolfgang Tillmans. In 2014, he curated the controversial Manifesta 10 exhibition in St Petersburg and in 2017 took over the artistic direction of Skulptur Projekte Münster. In 2009, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum honoured König’s career with a lifetime achievement award.
He did not consider himself a classic collector, but rather bought spontaneously or received gifts. He donated 50 works to the Museum Ludwig last year, including pieces by Pawel Althamer, Maria Eichhorn, Genzken, Graham, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jenny Holzer, Richard Long and Jeremy Deller.
The Cologne auction house Van Ham last month announced it will offer 400 works from König’s collection at auction on 1-2 October. Among the artists whose works feature in the sale are On Kawara, Nicole Eisenman, Maria Lassnig and Polke.
König was married four times; to Ilka Schellenberg, with whom he had two daughters and one son; then to Edda Köchl, an actress and illustrator and mother of his younger son; to Barbara Weiss, a Berlin art dealer who died in 2016; and finally to Heidi Specker, a Berlin-based artist. König’s sons Leo and Johann are both art dealers—Leo in New York, and Johann in Berlin.
- Kasper König; born Mettingen, Germany, 21 November 1943; died Berlin 9 August 2024