Timm Ulrichs

Timm Ulrichs was born in 1940 in Berlin, Germany. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Hanover from 1959 to 1966. During his studies he became interested in Dadaism and the work of Kurt Schwitters, whose influence can be traced throughout his later practice. In 1961 he founded the Werbezentrale für Totalkunst & Banalismus, which included the Zimmer-Galerie and Zimmer-Theater in Hanover. From 1972 to 2005 he taught sculpture at the Kunstakademie Münster. He produced and distributed his own printed materials such as posters, postcards, and leaflets, while formulating his idea of total art defined by the statement “art is life, life is art.”

Ulrichs approached art as an open system that encompassed every aspect of existence. He viewed artistic practice as inseparable from life and rejected distinctions between artist, artwork, and audience. In 1961 he declared himself the first living artwork, establishing the foundation for his lifelong exploration of self as subject and medium. His idea of total art described an art without boundaries of genre or material, one that could include thought, language, action, and documentation. Through this framework he created works that tested the limits of perception and meaning, often revealing the systems that structure art and communication.

His ideas found form in works that merged conceptual precision with physical experience. In Der Mensch als Kunstwerk, 1961, he exhibited himself as a living artwork, while in Der Findling, 1976, he enclosed himself within a stone block, transforming endurance into a sculptural act. For The End, 1970, he had the phrase tattooed on his eyelid, turning the body into both medium and message. In Ich kann keine Kunst mehr sehen, 1975, he appeared blindfolded at an art fair with a sign reading “I can’t see art anymore,” using language and action to question how art is perceived. Similar concepts shaped his text-based works, which include concrete poetry, word sculptures, and visual palindromes that extend his investigation of language as material. Through these interrelated approaches, Ulrichs treated thought, body, and language as continuous elements of a single artistic system.

In 1969, the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld presented a full retrospective of Ulrichs’ work, an uncommon recognition for an artist at such an early stage in his career. His participation in_ Documenta 6 _in Kassel in 1977 brought his practice to wider attention and established his position in the field of conceptual and performance art. In the years that followed, his work was exhibited in major European institutions including the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, ZKM Karlsruhe, and Museum der Moderne in Salzburg. Later retrospectives at the Kunstverein Hannover and the Sprengel Museum Hannover in 2010, and Nichts als Theater at Kunstmuseum Ahlen in 2023, traced six decades of continuous production. His contributions have been recognized with several awards, including the Konrad von Soest Prize, the Karl Ernst Osthaus Prize, the Will Grohmann Prize, and the Käthe Kollwitz Prize of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. He currently lives and works in Hanover, Münster, and Berlin.