Biography

Gerd Winner is a German painter, sculptor and a pioneering graphic artist. He studied art in Berlin in the 1950’s and 1960’s, where he still resides and works today. Winner has works in most major International collections including The Tate and MOMA. His most famous artworks are ground breaking hyper-real screen prints, relating to usually uncelebrated urban architecture. These screen prints were produced in collaboration with Chris Prater at Kelpra Studio, London - a studio well known for producing work with cutting edge artists. Winner was granted to come and work in London in 1970 by the British Council, which began this fruitful collaboration. The large scale screen prints of places such as London Docks and Tube lines, the backs of tenement blocks and railway arches show a 1970’s British urban landscape slowly transforming from a 19th century industrial legacy. The same is apparent in his works focusing on Germany and the USA. Crucially, these works appear both immediately recognisable from our daily lives, but at the same time distant and fantastical - a result of the scale of them and the pioneering digital manipulation the images were given. In 2000, Gerd Winner designed and built the "House of Silence" - a walk-in sculpture - on the site of the former concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. The art encourages the audience to sit and reflect.