Dieter Appelt was born in 1935 in Niemegk, Germany. From 1954 he enrolled at university to study music and vocal studies and began studying photography a few years later. While pursuing a career as a professional singer and member of the choir of the Deutsche Oper Berlin in the 1970s, he simultaneously began to receive attention for his photography, painting, and sculpture, which became notable through his use of monumental sequences and tableaux compositions. Through the techniques of long exposure times, multiple exposures, shadow and mirror compositions, Appelt’s images explore such themes as memory, time, transience, life, death, and recurrence.
Read MoreIn 1990, Dieter Appelt took part in the Venice Biennale and again in 1999. In 1994 several museums participated in a travelling exhibition of a major retrospective (including in Québec, New York, New Orleans, and Berlin). In 1982 Dieter Appelt was appointed professor for film, video and photography at the University of the Arts in Berlin. He later went on to hold the offices of vice dean and vice president of the university. Important solo exhibitions include the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg (2009), the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (2007), Musée Réattu, Arles (2007), the Canadian Centre of Architecture (2005), La Maison Rouge (2004), and the Théâtre de la photographie et de l’image, Nice (2004). Recent group exhibitions include Pasquart, Biel (2017), Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (2016), Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2016), Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel (2016), Busan Museum of Art (2015), Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2014), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2014), Kunsthalle Bremen (2013), Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2013), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest (2013). His work is included in numerous public collections such as that of the Berlinische Galerie and Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, LACMA, SFMOMA, the National Gallery of Scotland, the National Portrait Gallery, London, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Canadian Centre of Architecture. Dieter Appelt lives and works in Berlin.
Text courtesy Galerie Thomas Schulte.
