Hede Bühl has been exploring motifs of human beings, concentrating on the human head, since studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Düsseldorf under Joseph Beuys in the 1960’s, and was also inspired by her residencies at the Villa Romana in Florence in 1973/74 and the Villa Massimo in Rome in 1979/80. Fascinated by the archaic elliptical forms and traces of the sensory organs, Hede Bühl abstracts the theme of „humanity“ predominantly in sculptures made of bronze, stone and aluminum, as well as in her expressive drawings. Her works echo the history of modern art, reaching back to ancient times and archaic cultures. At the same time, Hede Bühl‘s works are impressively contemporary and point to the future in search for how „being human“ might be defined. This “timeless dialogue” is what makes Hede Bühl’s works so relevant. We are reminded of the monumentality of the “Moai” sculptures on Easter Island, of the Memento Mori as we encounter it in Baroque churches in Western culture, the “Man-Machine” from the 1927 film Metropolis, and also the knowledge of digitally generated bodies. In her ongoing quest to define what it means to be human, Hede Bühl’s sculptures are truly pioneering.
Hede Bühl was born in Haan, Germany in 1940. She lives and works in Düsseldorf. After studying as a master student of Joseph Beuys in the 1960s, she was awarded the Villa Romana Prize in 1973 and the Villa Massimo Prize in 1979. In 2007, she received the prestigious Käthe Kollwitz Prize. Her works are represented in museum collections such as the Nationalgalerie Berlin, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Wilhelm-Hack Museum Ludwigshafen, Museum Beelden Aan Zee Schebeningen, Kunsthalle Mannheim and the Cragg Foundation, Skulpturen Park Waldfrieden, to name a few. In the 1970s and 1980s, her works were shown at the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Biennale di Bronzetto Padua and solo exhibitions at the Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Städtische Galerie Nordhorn and Skulpturenmuseum Marl, among others. Recent exhibitions have been at Cragg Foundation Skulpturen Park Waldfrieden (2019), Villa Zanders, Ber gisch Gladbach (2024), Foundation Krummhörn, Pilsum, Kunstverein, Krefeld (both 2025), Museum für Brot und Kunst, Ulm and Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (both 2026).
