Bernd Lohaus

Bernd Lohaus' artistic practice centers on the use of wood, stone, and paper – materials from which he removes extraneous elements to reveal their essence in simple works that express a rigorous formal language. Despite the formal simplicity reminiscent of American Minimalism in his sculptures, Lohaus departs from this style through his focus on the history of the materials employed.

Biography of Bernd Lohaus

Bernd Lohaus was born in Düsseldorf in 1940. After receiving his initial training in classic sculpture, he trained at the art academy in Düsseldorf from 1963 to 1966, where he was fortunate to have Joseph Beuys as his mentor. Subsequently, the artist relocated to Antwerp in the mid-1960s.

Notably, between 1966 and 1976, Lohaus ran the "Wide White Space" gallery in Antwerp alongside his wife, Anny De Decker. During this period, their gallery showcased the works of artists such as James Lee Byars, Joseph Beuys, Carl Andre, and Bruce Nauman, among others.

Only after 1976 did Lohaus start to concentrate more exclusively on his artistic pursuits. He sourced materials for his creations from the banks of the River Scheldt, utilizing everything from substantial wooden beams to discarded metal fragments and cords. Bernd Lohaus integrated random words, text fragments, and sentences into his sculptures and drawings. This distinctive approach imbued his pieces with semantic and existential layers.

Bernd Lohaus' body of work has been the subject of several retrospectives hosted in different venues, including the Antwerp Museum of Contemporary Art in 2015 and the FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais in 2014.