We will host the IKG Annual Meeting 2022 from September 29 (arrival) to October 2 (departure) in Wiesbaden. The core of this meeting is a public symposium that will take place in the Museum Wiesbaden. This is planned for October 1st from 2 to 5:45 pm. We want to address the changed political situation in Europe due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and discuss the consequences for an open-minded concept of culture. Invited to the podium are members and guests, artists and curators from Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia and Germany. This year’s exhibition of transportable works by members and guests will open at the Hafemann Gallery https://www.galerie-hafemann.de/ on September 30, thus also enabling a visual dialogue between different attitudes. In addition, discussions with actors of the Wiesbaden art scene will take place.
Press: www.faustkultur.de
Dietrich Helms with Eva-Maria Schön at the IKG-annual meeting in Chemnitz in 2015.
Dietrich Helms
The International Artists Forum mourns the death of its founding member Dietrich Helms.
Dietrich Helms, born in Osnabrück in 1933, developed a multifaceted oeuvre over decades, always asking himself new questions, arriving at radical solutions in the visual. His art, as a sensual becoming, as a sentient thinking, opened new openings again and again.
After studying art in Hamburg and Kassel and German and literature at the University of Hamburg, he first worked as a teacher, and from 1965 to 1998 he held a professorship at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg. He served as IKG-President from 1978 till 1981.
Early on, he broke away from traditional notions of the image and found his way to the concept of the image as a structural field. The spectrum of his works ranges from drawings to material objects, from word evaluations to installations and paintings. The material of his art was of co-determining effect, haptic experience and visual he let play sovereignly into each other and also the incidental coincidence was included in all conceptuality.
Dietrich Helms was not only a wonderful artist, but also an instigator of artistic activity, a mediator, a critic, researcher, and a generous, devoted human being. We will all miss him very much.
The International Artists Forum is shocked by Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine. Our solidarity is with the people who are fighting for peace, freedom of art, democracy and human rights in Ukraine and Russia.
The war, which never was really gone, is now back in the middle of Europe. The always fragile world order is threatened in its foundations. The unthinkable has now actually happened. Let us hope with Ukraine and all people at her side that the war can be defeated as soon as possible, that death, destruction and the immeasurable suffering may end.
The International Artists Forum IKG was initiated by well-known artists like Joseph Beuys, Jochen Gerz, Gotthard Graubner, Klaus Staeck and others, and founded 1976 in Cologne. It was and is an association of artists, curators, critics working on the field of the visual arts. As a parallel to the Pen-Club the IKG is engaged for freedom of the art, of information and press, for the right of cultural self-determination, for tolerance and cultural diversity. The IKG is member of the German Kunstrat, an advisory board for German cultural affairs and member of the German Kulturrat and of the foundation board of the foundation Kunstfonds.
The IKG has 241 members from Argentinien, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belarusm, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Israel, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, United States of America.