Renowned German sculptor and installation artist Guenther Uecker, famous for his striking use of nails in art, has died at the age of 95.
From the 1950s, Uecker began hammering nails into everyday objects—furniture, televisions, canvases, and even tree trunks—producing mesmerising wave-like patterns, illusions of movement, and complex shadow effects.
Though best known for “painting with nails” rather than a brush, Uecker, one of Germany’s most influential modern artists, later incorporated materials such as sand, stones, and ash into his works.
Born on 13 March 1930 in Wendorf, in what is now Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, he grew up on the Wustrow peninsula near the Baltic port of Wismar. His youth was scarred by the horrors of the Second World War.
Just before Germany’s surrender, the ship Cap Arcona sank near his hometown, carrying 4,500 concentration camp prisoners. Uecker helped bury many victims who washed ashore—an experience that deeply marked him and later inspired his piece New Wustrow Cloths.
In one haunting episode, fearing the advance of Soviet troops, young Uecker nailed his family’s front door shut from the inside to shield his mother and sisters. He recalled that instinctive act in a 2015 documentary, describing it as a pivotal moment in his life and art.
Uecker showed artistic talent from an early age, often to his father’s dismay. In a 2010 interview with Rheinische Post, he recalled that his father, a farmer, saw him as “a failure and not quite normal” due to his constant drawing.
He began an apprenticeship as a painter and advertising designer in East Germany in 1949 but, eager to study under artist Otto Pankok, fled to West Germany in 1953 and enrolled at the University of Düsseldorf.
By the late 1950s, Uecker had developed his signature nail works, drawn to the nail for what he described as its “intrusiveness and potential for aggression”—qualities he believed he carried within himself.
In 1961, he joined the Zero art movement founded by Otto Piene and Heinz Mack. The group, formed in the post-war years, sought to rebuild art from the ground up with clarity and hope, declaring in their manifesto: “Zero is the beginning.”
Throughout his career, Uecker’s art engaged with contemporary events. He created ash paintings in response to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and following xenophobic riots in Rostock in 1992, he produced The Tortured Man, exhibited in 57 countries.
His work extended beyond galleries. Uecker designed stained glass windows for cathedrals and the prayer room in Berlin’s Reichstag, home to the German parliament.
When once asked whether he minded being known simply as “the nail artist”, Uecker responded, “Not at all. People need a symbol, an emblem—something they can identify with.”