Andreas Gursky

(German, born 1955)

Andreas Gursky is a German artist known for his large-scale digitally manipulated images. Similar in scope to early 19th-century landscape paintings, Gursky’s photographs capture built and natural environments on a grand scale. Often taken from a lofted vantage point, the artist latter splices together multiple images of the same scene. This dizzying repetition of elements creates a surreal monumentality, as seen in his 99 Cent (1999). “In retrospect I can see that my desire to create abstractions has become more and more radical,” he mused. “Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what's behind something.” Born January 15, 1955 in Leipzig, East Germany, he studied alongside fellow student Thomas Ruff under Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the 1980s. The Becher’s penchant for systematic documentation as a conceptual framework had a profound impact on Gursky’s photography. Emerging in the 1990s, the artist established himself as an important figure in contemporary German art, going on to be the subject of retrospectives at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 1998 and in 2001 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. On November 8, 2011, his photograph Rhein II sold at Christie's New York for $4.3 million, making it the most expensive photograph ever sold. Today, Gursky’s works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Modern in London. He lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.