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\n\tGerman conceptual artist Timm Ulrichs has died at the age of 86. His death on April 29 in Berlin was announced by the art association Kunstverein Hannover, of which he was the oldest member.<\/p>\n
\n\tBorn in Berlin in 1940, Ulrichs studied architecture at the Technical University of Hanover from 1959\u20131966. In 1961, inspired by the \u201cMerzkunst\u201d (Merz art) of Hanoverian artist Kurt Schwitters, he declared himself a \u201ctotal artist,\u201d renaming his living space and studio the Werbezentrale f\u00fcr Totalkunst & Banalismus (Advertising agency for total art, banalism, and extemporism).<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cTotal Art,\u201d he once stated, \u201cknows no boundaries as regards to genre and encompasses diverse disciplines that serve to get to the bottom of human existence.\u201d In keeping with this philosophy, Ulrichs\u2019s activities included putting himself on display inside a glass case as \u201cthe first living work of art\u201d (1961), running naked through thunderstorms holding a lightning rod (1963, 1972, 1977), spending 10 hours inside a hollowed-out boulder (1981), collecting tattoos, writing concrete poetry, and making pioneering computer and copy art.<\/p>\n
\n\tThough his reputation was often eclipsed by those of contemporaries, Ulrichs\u2019s works regularly anticipated artistic trends; many still seem relevant today. He is now considered one of Germany\u2019s most influential conceptual and action artists.<\/p>\n
\n\tUlrichs taught sculpture at the Kunstakademie M\u00fcnster from 1972 to 2005. His work was included in Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany, in 1977 and was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Sprengel Museum Hannover and the Kunstverein Hannover in 2010. At the time of his death, Ulrichs lived in Hanover and Berlin. No information on survivors is currently available.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1213108475.jpg?w=1024″] German conceptual artist Timm Ulrichs has died at the age of 86. His death on April 29 in Berlin was announced by the art association Kunstverein Hannover, of which he was the oldest member. Born in Berlin in 1940, Ulrichs studied architecture at the Technical University of Hanover from 1959\u20131966. In 1961, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1914008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1914008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1914008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1914008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1914008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}