Rebecca Horn, a renowned German sculptor, has passed away at 80. Her death was confirmed by her New York gallery, Sean Kelly Gallery, which did not disclose the cause.
“I was privileged to work with Rebecca Horn for nearly four decades both as a curator and her gallerist,” said Sean Kelly. “Rebecca was a heroic, pioneering artist whose fierce independence, energy, and spirit touched everybody who came into her orbit. I am honored to have had the privilege to work with her and to have been able to call her my friend. She will be greatly missed.”
Horn was born in 1944 in Michelstadt, Germany, near the end of World War II. During this time, her family was in hiding to avoid persecution by the Nazis for their Jewish heritage. She began to draw during her early childhood and continued throughout her teenage years, particularly during her recovery from tuberculosis. She briefly attended the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts in 1964 before dropping out due to health issues related to fiberglass exposure.
Horn’s work in the late 1960s and early ’70s included wearable soft sculptures made from cloth, wood, bandages, and found objects. These were used in performance pieces that navigated the relationship between the body and space. Horn’s performance piece Einhorn (Unicorn) (1970), featuring a conical horn worn on the head of a nude female performer, remains one of her best-known works.
By the 1980s, Horn expanded her practice to incorporate mechanized sculptures. The Little Painting School Performs a Waterfall (1988), for instance, involved mechanized paintbrushes that created dynamic and unpredictable splatters of paint. These explorations continued in the coming decades. Concert of Sighs (1997), her contribution to the 1997 Venice Biennale, featured an installation made from the ruins of Venetian houses and horns that played sighs and whispers.
In addition to her installations and performances, Horn wrote books and screenplays, and also directed several films and operas. Her most famous film is arguably Buster’s Bedroom, a 1990 comedy starring Donald Sutherland and Geraldine Chaplin.
Horn suffered a stroke in 2015, which led her to withdraw from the public eye. Her legacy, however, continues to resonate across Germany and the entire art world. Currently, her work is being showcased in a retrospective at Haus der Kunst in Munich, running until October 13th. Additionally, her work will be featured at Galerie Thomas Schulte in the upcoming exhibition “Concert of Sighs,” opening on Wednesday during Berlin Art Week.
Horn’s work is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate, among others.
