Anton Henning Berlin, Germany, b. 1964
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© Maleen Daniëls -
Anton Henning is a German artist whose multifaceted practice has made him a distinctive figure in contemporary European art
Lives and works in Berlin and Manker, Germany
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Internationally recognized for his expressive synthesis of painting, sculpture, drawing, film, photography, and music, Henning creates immersive environments that blur the boundaries between disciplines and aesthetic hierarchies.
If art history can be seen as a continuous conversation, Henning proves to be an eloquent and mischievous interlocutor, fluent in many artistic languages. Although best known for his paintings—where looping lines, arabesque motifs, and interlacing planes seem to escape the flatness of the canvas—he moves fluidly across media, combining traditional genres such as portraiture, still life, landscape, and abstraction into unified, often site-specific compositions. His practice can be viewed as a contemporary interpretation of the Gesamtkunstwerk—a total work of art—in which all forms of artistic expression coexist and enter into dialogue.
Henning’s paintings reveal a deep awareness of art history while challenging its conventions. He freely reinterprets and parodies the visual idioms of masters such as Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, and Picabia, transforming quotation into invention. His signature three-lobed abstract motif—at times radiating like a fan, at others swirling into larger arabesques—appears throughout his work as both a compositional anchor and a playful emblem of artistic freedom.Reworking classical modes of representation, Henning juxtaposes abstraction with figuration, irony with sensuality. His art subverts distinctions between “high” and “low” culture, exposing aesthetic clichés and dismantling conventions of taste. The result is a body of work that oscillates between humor and elegance, analysis and intuition—an open field where art history and contemporary experience merge.
“Despite the complexity of the pictorial content, I am probably most interested in intuition and sensuality. My painting is somehow always in the exceptional state of being in love. That’s quite risky, of course.”– Anton Henning
Henning’s works are held in major public and private collections worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; Centre National des Arts, Paris; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; The Menil Collection, Houston; De Pont Museum for Contemporary Art, Tilburg; National Museum of Art, Osaka; Arp Museum, Remagen; Daros Collection, Zurich; Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; Portland Art Museum, Portland; SMAK, Ghent; Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; and the Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden. -
Works
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