[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-903775824.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tSelf-taught German conceptual artist Rune Mields died on June 27 in Cologne, Germany, at the age of 91. Her death was first reported by the German Press Agency.<\/p>\n
\n\tBorn in M\u00fcnster in 1935, Mields came to art-making in her 30s after completing an apprenticeship as a bookseller. She first gained attention for her \u201cR\u00f6hrenbilder\u201d (Pipe Paintings) of the late 1960s and early \u201970s, large-format monochrome canvases featuring hyperreal renderings of three-dimensional geometric forms.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cTo understand life,\u201d she told the German art and culture magazine Monopol <\/em>in 2025, \u201cyou have to understand mathematics. It describes the fundamental principles of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBy the 1970s, following a move to Cologne, Mields\u2019s interest in mathematics would lead her to her to examine ordering systems across cultures. Over the next 50 years, she produced works that drew from such disparate sources as signs taken from ancient geometry, Baroque music, Paleolithic fertility symbols, Arabic and Persian ornamentation, and Western art history.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201c[A]lthough they frequently feature abstract signs, words and numbers,\u201d wrote Noemi Smolik in Frieze<\/em> in 2015, \u201cthe pictures are never conceived in purely conceptual terms, as forms of thought. Instead, her pictures always also have a strong graphic, near ornamental impact.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tMields participated in Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany, in 1977. In 2000 she was awarded the Gabriele M\u00fcnter Prize, Germany\u2019s award for female visual artists over the age of 40, and on the occasion of her 90th birthday last year, the Kunstmuseum Bonn and the Ludwig Forum Aachen gave her solo exhibitions.<\/p>\n \n\tHer work is held in the collections of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne; the Kunstmuseum D\u00fcsseldorf; the ZKM Karlsruhe; the Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Nationalgalerie in Berlin; and Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, among other institutions.<\/p>\n \n\tMields remained engaged with mathematical principles until her death. \u201cI\u2019m currently working on a series about the five Platonic solids,\u201d she told Monopol<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019m particularly interested in the dodecahedron, which represents the fifth Platonic element: the universe. Infinity, of course, remains a lifelong pursuit.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tShe will be buried in the Kassel artists\u2019 cemetery in a grave she designed for herself in 1992.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/rune-mields-conceptual-artist-dead-1234790852\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-903775824.jpg?w=1024″] Self-taught German conceptual artist Rune Mields died on June 27 in Cologne, Germany, at the age of 91. Her death was first reported by the German Press Agency. Born in M\u00fcnster in 1935, Mields came to art-making in her 30s after completing an apprenticeship as a bookseller. She first gained attention for […]<\/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-2020412","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\/2020412","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=2020412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2020412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2020412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2020412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}