Werner Buettner Overview

Born in Jena in 1954, Werner Buettner moved to Western Germany with his parents in 1960. He began studying law in Berlin in 1974 and founded during that time the "League against contradictory behaviour" together with Albert Oehlen in his shared studio the autodidact Buettner painted large, fierce and quick paintings with a pastose colouring.The brown colours stood in contrast to the colourfulness of the "Junge Wilden", with whom the painting were often seen and exhibited.He broke off his studies and moved to Hamburg in 1977, where he published his first essays and drawings in the "Dum Dum Liga Journal" of which he was the co-founder. Together with Oehlen he made murals and produced a record. Both artists founded othe spectacular ass9ociations. Since 1982 they participated in various group projects. For example together with Martin Kippenberger Buettner also published a large number of own texts, which merged with his paintings to a new level of meaning.A subvercive-irinic undertone was typical for Buettners and his artists friends. Their realism was politically motivated and commented on everyday-events. Society´s values were questioned an relativated. Buettner an all kinds of painting, painted still lives, genre paintings, self-portraits, pictures of animals, history paintings and emblematic paintings. Colours were mixed on the canavas and formed by straight margins and black lines. The painter dripped long lines of colours on the pastose painting, which became his trademark. Since the 1990´s the artist increasingly attened to drawings and printed graphics and worked with large format collages. Werner Buettner holds a chair at the Hochschule fuer Bildende Kuenste in Hamburg since 1989. He lives and work in Hamburg.