Ludger Gerdes

Ludger Gerdes (10 April 1954, Lastrup, (Germany) – 17 October 2008 near Dülmen) was a German painter, sculptor and multimedia artist.

After his school-leaving examination (Abitur) at the secondary school Antonianum in Vechta, Ludger Gerdes studied at the Academy of Arts in Münster with Timm Ulrichs and Lothar Baumgarten from 1975 to 1977, and from 1977 to 1982 at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts with Gerhard Richter.

Gerdes dealt with this ultimately political position within art especially, not only as a visual artist, but also, very effectively, as a theoretical author and performer.

Experts regard him as a silent, however important artist of his generation, whose "visual metaphors” in the public space formulated a philosophical and aesthetic reflection of human existence, like for example, the neon sculpture ICHS (1989) in the garden of the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld.

A new group of works consisting of conceptual diptychs combined literary and philosophical texts with photography.