Michael van Ofen

"The art of this painter is above all an art of omission. " (Wilhelm Werthern in: Le Monde diplomatique No. 8735 of 14.11.2008)

Born in 1956 and living in Düsseldorf, the painter Michael van Ofen works between the reference points of 19th century classical landscape and portrait painting, and the conceptual art of post-war modernism. Van Ofen, who studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1974 to 1982 and was Gerhard Richter's master pupil, makes paintings that are mostly based on photographic models and often quote Old Master paintings. With a sparing painterly gesture, executed in the traditional wet-in-wet technique, he abstracts his pictorial works and reduces them to the most necessary motifs.