o. T., 1967
Horst Antes

Horst Antes (1936) became known in the 1960s with his series of works of cephalopods - they have become his trademark. The cephalopods are creatures consisting of head, legs, feet, the artist renounces the torso. With these creatures Antes creates an allegorical fable world. They can symbolically stand for any conceivable state of mind and leave a feeling of gentle irony or subliminal comedy. Horst Antes' point of departure is to be found above all in the informality of post-war painting and its gestural expressive gestures. In contrast to the abstraction of the Informal , however, Antes then developed a new figurative pictorial language and was one of the first in post-war painting to search for new, even playful possibilities of figurative painting. In addition to prints and paintings, his work also includes sculptures in public space. Antes has long been considered an important German artist: his paintings and editions can be found in the most prestigious German museums and private collections.