Vincent van Volkmer - Original painting No. 1511, signed

Original painting "No. 1511" by Vincent van Volkmer (1933–2025).

Size: 43.5 x 31.5 cm.
Technique: Acrylic on cardboard
Year: 1981
Signed: Yes, front left (Further handwritten notes on the back, name, title...)

Vincent van Volkmer (1933–2025) was an exceptionally versatile American artist whose work was significantly influenced by Minimalism and geometric abstraction. Born in Los Angeles and raised in an influential New York family, he moved to West Germany early on to study art and mathematics. These two disciplines are still reflected in his rigorous, reduced compositions and the clear linear structures of his post-war art, which often incorporates elements of Hard-Edge and Color Field painting. Throughout his life, van Volkmer moved in the circles of the most important cultural figures of his era. In the 1950s, he was in contact with Jackson Pollock in New York; later, he studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Otto Pankok and formed friendships with Günther Uecker and A.R. Penck. He experienced a particularly creative period in 1970s Berlin, where he lived for a time in a shared apartment with music icon David Bowie. His insatiable curiosity eventually led him on extensive travels through the Middle East and Asia. From 1995, he spent fifteen years in Japan, immersing himself in East Asian culture and training as a bonsai master – an influence that profoundly shaped the meditative tranquility and reduced use of color in his later works. Besides painting, van Volkmer was also known for his eccentric activism. At international art fairs such as Art Berlin, he caused a stir by appearing in a bee costume to draw political attention to the global decline in bee populations. In his final years, which he spent in Hamburg, he also garnered media attention with his cryptic claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the true inventor of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Vincent van Volkmer leaves behind a multifaceted body of work that bridges the gap between intellectual rigor and pop-cultural performance art.