Tal R Tel Aviv, Israel, b. 1967

Born in Tel Aviv in 1967, Tal R moved to Denmark at a young age and has since become one of the most distinctive figures in contemporary European art. He studied at Copenhagen’s Billedskolen before completing his formal training at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where he graduated in 2000. Since 2005, he has been a professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, continuing to influence new generations of artists.

Working across painting, drawing, collage, printmaking, and sculpture, Tal R rejects stylistic categorization. He describes his approach as a “kitchen-sink” method — a process grounded in experimentation, improvisation, and the joyful fusion of high and low culture. His art draws on a wide spectrum of sources: childhood memories, urban landscapes, folklore, myths, and the legacy of modernist painting.

Tal R defines his visual language as “Dirty Minimalism,” often referring to the Yiddish word kolbojnik — meaning “leftovers” or “scraps” — to describe his practice of transforming fragments and ordinary materials into art. Whether constructing canvases from glued fabrics or using felt-tip pens, ink, and plasticine, he celebrates the intuitive, the handmade, and the imperfect. This approach is both instinctive and deliberate, layered with references to Expressionism, Fauvism, Symbolism, Art Nouveau, Outsider and Naïve art, and the aesthetics of Degenerate Art.