The Querini Stampalia Foundation with the support of the Michael Werner Gallery , New York and London, presents "Jörg Immendorff: Ichich, Ichihr, Ichwir / We All Have to Die, curated by Francesco Bonami.
The exhibition is a Collateral Event of the 58th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale and represents the first major exhibition of the artist in an Italian institution .
Not a retrospective, but the first project to investigate a fundamental theme of Immendorff's work: the representation of the artist, but above all, his participation in his own paintings. Therefore, not a self-portrait in its most classical sense, but more a direct intervention within the collective situation defined by the canvases.
The whole of Immendorff's production can be considered a profound reflection on the role of the artist in a particular historical moment of strong social and political commitment ; an era where the very conception of the artist as an individual became the very symbol of a bourgeois and reactionary attitude.
During his studies at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, Immendorff was a brilliant student of Joseph Beuys . The artist represents himself as a rebellious pupil who, by means of painting, challenges the ideology of his master. The Venetian exhibition will therefore be the first to focus on this particular aspect of Immendorff's poetics; on his constant struggle to elaborate and overcome this "Oedipal complex" through pictorial representation. For Immendorff, artistic practice thus becomes an instrument of self-analysis and emancipation.
The public of the Biennale will therefore have the rare opportunity to confront the rich and complex work of one of the most controversial figures in the contemporary painting scene.

Jörg Immendorff (1945-2007) was one of the most important artists to emerge in post-WWII Germany. His work has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions since the mid-1960s. He participated in documenta V in 1972, documenta VII in 1982, and was included in the 1976 Biennale of Art. His other important exhibitions were held at the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam; at the Kunstmuseum Bonn; at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; and at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, just to mention a few. More recently, a major retrospective entitled Jörg Immendorff: For All Beloved in the World was held at the Haus der Kunst in Munich which will move to the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid in 2019. Immendorff lived and worked between Düsseldorf and Hamburg until his death in 2007.