Gallery Artists

Dokoupil

Portrait

In 1968 his family fled from Czechoslovakia to Germany. From 1976 to 1978 Dokoupil studied art in Cologne, Frankfurt am Main and New York at the Cooper Union under the conceptual artist Hans Haacke.

Since 1980 he belonged to the Cologne artist group Mülheimer Freiheit together with Walter Dahn, Hans Peter Adamski, Peter Bömmels, Gerard Kever and Gerhard Naschberger. In 1982 he had his first exhibition of collaboration paintings with Walter Dahn. In the same year he took part in documenta 7 in Kassel. From 1983 to 1984, together with Walter Dahn, he teached at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 1984 he was represented at "Von hier aus - Zwei Monate neue deutsche Kunst" in Düsseldorf.

Since 1989 Dokoupil has been painting his pictures without a brush. He uses different techniques and materials such as candle soot, car tires, spray paint, mother milk, whips, and soap bubbles. Dokoupil has been teaching at the Circulo de Bellas Artes, the Academy of Fine Arts, in Madrid since 1989. In 2003/2004 he was represented with works in the exhibition “Obsessive Malerei – Ein Rückblick auf die Neuen Wilden” in Karlsruhe. His exhibition "Malerei im 21. Jahrhundert - Werkschau 1981-2005" in the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg attracted much attention in 2005. It was also shown at the National Gallery in Prague in 2006.

Dokoupil never wanted to be subordinated to a personal or fixed style. Thus, he never developed a uniform style that would make his works instantly recognizable as his own. Rather, he paraphrases different styles, plays with them and constantly invents new techniques with which he excessively experiments. Only the certain expressivity and his affinity for eroticism can be underlined as continuous characteristics in his work. His work today consists of over 60 so-called series and well over 100 different styles and techniques. Because of his renunciation of his own artistic handwriting, he bears the nickname "The Sphinx".

Dokoupil lives and works in Berlin, Madrid, Prague, Rio de Janeiro and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

Works