Martin Wehmer 馬丁・韋默爾

Martin Wehmer was born in 1966 in Hattingen, Germany. After receiving formal art education, he became a practising painter. In 1996, he was awarded the German art prize of the Volksbanken. He took up art residencies in Edinburgh in 2003 and in Beijing in 2008, organized by the International Exchange and Studio Program Basel (IAAB). Since 2008, he has lived and worked in Beijing. In 2009, he was one of the organizers of the 798 Beijing Biennale. He has taught as a lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, and in the CDK project (Chinese-German Academy of Art), a joint project of the University of the Arts, Berlin and the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, facilitating art exchange programs between China and Germany.

 

Martin Wehmer’s paintings are composed of thick brushstroke in thick oil paint and are snapshots of people in different states of mind and engaged in different daily activities. Wehmer’s brushstroke is free and bold on the canvas. He describes his style as “the meaning of a post-abstraction painting… in the field between abstraction and figurism”. Although Wehmer’s style is abstract, the compositions of his works are often simple and the subject matters in his paintings clearly represented.