Thomas Huber

Thomas Huber – Art studies in Basel, London and Düsseldorf

Thomas Huber was born in Zürich on 14 July 1955. His father, an architect, conveyed Thomas’ first understandings of space and perspective, and architecture was to become a central theme in Huber’s artistic creativity, initially studying from 1977 to 1978 at the School of Design in Basel with Franz Fedier, and drawing him to London in 1979 where he attended the Royal College of Art for several months. That same year he returned to Germany to study at the State Art Academy in Düsseldorf where he eventually became master student under the multi-talented Fritz Schwegler. The artist began his large picture series in the 1980s in which his thoughts circled around spaces and vantage points, with the individual painting conceived not as a finished work but, with wit and subtlety, as an ongoing and unfinished process. 

Profound art out of words and pictures

Thomas Huber not only relies on the power of the visual but also skillfully employs the power of words. This is well suited to his preference for sparse pictorial worlds that do not splurge with opulent detail and colourful splendour, but instead place a deliberately restrained, yet all the more pointed and cautious approach on that depicted. In order to deepen the subject in question, he provides his paintings with speeches which become all the more flowery and complex. Thomas Huber was active as painter, sculptor, graphic artist and poet, attracting great international attention in all fields, making him long since one of the most important artists of his generation. Structures of geometric forms grow out to become complete urban architectures, while masks illustrate spiritual circumstances and relationships rather than real figures. The element of the unfinished inherent in Huber’s artworks forces the viewer to work themselves, to have a continued discourse with the picture in which the object suddenly becomes a mirror that reflects and reorientates curious glances. The cool distance that Thomas Huber brings to his work prevents too much trust in the encounter, which the artist only holds possible to a very limited extent between the work and the audience anyway. 

Respected teacher and celebrated artist

Thomas Huber was professor at the University of Fine Arts in Braunschweig from 1992 to 1999 and chairman of the Deutscher Künstlerbund (Alliance of German Artists) from 2000 to 2002. He is one of the most original conceptual artists of his generation, who pursues his projects with a clear focus, avoiding superfluous embellishments and deviations. Thomas Huber has received prizes and honors for his art including the Lower Saxony Art Prize in 1995, the artist prize of the Cologne Fine Art & Antiques Fair in 1999 (still under the name ‘art multiple prize’), and the Art Prize of the Heitland Foundation in 2005. His works have long been an integral part of great international collections such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Bundeskunstsammlung (Federal Collection of Contemporary Art), and the Kunsthaus Zürich.