The "cephalopod" is Horst Antes' unmistakable trademark. Like his teacher HAP Grieshaber at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts, he courageously opposed the prevailing zeitgeist in Germany at the time with his new figurative painting. He was particularly influenced by Willem de Kooning, who combined informal and figurative elements. Antes also found his way to the figure via Informel. Against the background of the popular and widespread Kachina dolls of the American Pueblo Indians, he gradually approached his most important motif, the cephalopod, by means of thrown-on color structures. Since then, he has worked with this form in countless techniques, variations and modifications. The characteristic silouette remains, even when in the 1980s he increasingly replaced his three-dimensional representations with two-dimensional stencil figures. Horst Antes has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes in the art world and is represented in the largest collections in Germany. (ED)
1936   born in Heppenheim on October 18
1957 - 1959   studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, student of HAP Grieshaber
1960 - 1963   development of the "cephalopod" typical of his oeuvre
1962   Villa Romana Award, Florence
1963   Scholarship of the Villa Massimo in Rome
1967 - 1973   teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe
1967 - 1968   Visiting professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts Berlin
since 1983   member of the Free Academy of the Arts Hamburg
1984 - 2000   professorship in Karlsruhe
since 1990   lives and works in Karlsruhe, Berlin and Sicellino/Italy