Jorg Immendorff, Dinner with Friends

1989, oil on canvas, 230 x 500cm

Born in 1945 (Bleckede, Germany). Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf. Professor at Stadelschule, Frankfurt.

Going back to real figures and stories is resistance to modernist art. As a sign that we were at the finale of post-modernism, neo-modernism emerged in the late ' 70s and early  ' 80s, centering in Germany.

Together with Anselm Kiefer, Jorg Immendorff belongs to the generation of the  ' 68 Student Movement and is a leading artist of neo-expressionism. He gained the world spotlight by attending Venice Biennale 1980 and Kassel Dokumenta 1982. German artists of the time were getting interested in dealing with very German subjects, German history and German social messages. Under the circumstances of a country divided by ideology, they became sensitive to their history and current reality. Thus they tried to recover their lost German tradition by combining figurative components with their stories.

Including Dinner with Friends, Immendorff ' s paintings are a mixture of historical and political figures and German images which most Germans can recognize immediately. They look like a miniature society portraying the past and the present Germany as well as containing a self-portrait of the artist. Showing the true reality, Immendorff ' s works form a close relationship with viewers. In particular, his canvases full of traditional images are effective in calling out to the public. He pulls sublime art down from its high altar into our ordinary lives