Klaus Rinke

Klaus Rinke was born in Wattenscheid, Germany, in 1939 and died in 2026.  

Klaus Rinke was a leading figure in German and international art. Much of his work explores reality through its physical and material dimensions, focusing on three fundamental concepts that shape our experience of the world: time, space, and gravity. In the 1970s, Rinke engaged these ideas through a series of performances in which he used his own body as a tool for experimentation, establishing a simple, refined visual language centered on elementary forms, gestures, and energies. The clock became a recurring motif, both for its direct connection to measured time and for its geometric form: a circle organized around a central point, evoking the relationship between time and space. In his paintings and graphite drawings, Rinke turned his attention to form. Combining abstraction with organic and biological references, these works suggest a “pre-embryonic” state, blending human, animal, and plant forms in a search for the origins of life and, more broadly, of all things.