Wolfgang-Tillmas

Wolfgang Tillmans

Designer

Wolfgang Tillmans was born in 1968 in Remscheid, Germany, and studied at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design from 1990 to 1992. In 2000, Tillmans was the first non-British artist and the first photographer to receive the Turner Prize. In 2013 he was appointed member of the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2015, he was awarded the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. In 2018, Tillmans is the recipient of the Kaiserring, the prestigious international art prize awarded by the city of Goslar.

Previously for ENO: War Requiem 

Career Highlights

Since the early 1990s, Tillmans’ work has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at international institutions; in recent years at Kunsthalle Zürich (2012), Moderna Museet in Stockholm (2012–2013), Kunstsammlung Düsseldorf – K21 in Düsseldorf (2013), the National Museum of Art in Osaka (2015), Serralves Museum in Porto (2016), Tate Modern in London (2017), Fondation Beyeler in Basel/Riehen (2017), Kunstverein in Hamburg (2017) and Carré d’Art – Musée d’art contemporain in Nîmes (2018), amongst others. At the beginning of 2018, Tillmans opened solo exhibitions at Musée d’Art Contemporain et de Multimédias in Kinshasa, at Circle Art Gallery and at GoDown Arts Centre Nairobi and at Johannesburg Art Gallery, the first stops of an exhibition tour of Africa and Asia organised by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.

Since the 1990s Wolfgang Tillmans has produced numerous publications and editorials, nearly all conceived and designed by the artist himself. Since 2016, Tillmans has put renewed focus on his enduring interest in music, producing his own songs and music videos, as well as making live appearances as a musician and DJ. He has operated the non-profit exhibition space Between Bridges since 2006. First located in London until 2011, he re-opened it in January 2014 in Berlin.

Wolfgang Tillmans lives and works in Berlin and London.

Last updated: 21st August 2019