Mark Lammert
1960– · German painter, illustrator and stage designer
Mark Lammert (born 30 September 1960 in Berlin) is a German painter, illustrator, graphic artist and stage designer who lives and works in Berlin. He studied painting at the Kunsthochschule Berlin from 1979 to 1986 and later became a master scholar at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. His work, made in post-reunification Germany, questions the limits of what can be represented in a picture.
From early portraits such as Stephan Hermlin (1987) and the group scenes of "People Waiting" (1983–88), his painting combines figuration with reduction. Around 1994 and 1995 he made the series "allied", applying red tones to the back of maps, and from 1998 he worked on small pictures that he expanded into larger tableaux. Series such as "Armbrusr", "Weiß" and "Schwarz" place paint blots that look like wounds on white or dark grounds. Alongside, he produced a substantial body of prints and work books mixing collage, drawing and handwritten text, such as "Risse" (2004).
His stage designs for Heiner Müller, beginning with "Duell-Traktor-Fatzer" (1993) at the Berliner Ensemble, turn the materiality of his painting into theatrical space. He received the Käthe Kollwitz Prize (1999), and in 2011 he was appointed professor of painting at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, where he has taught a new generation of artists.