And still ...

Jannis Kounellis, who was born in Piraeus (Greece) in 1936 and has lived in Rome since the 1950s, is considered to be a major figure in contemporary art and one of the leading representatives of Arte Povera, alongside Mario Merz, Giovanni Anselmo, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Luciano Fabro and Giuseppe Penone.

Nils-Udo was born in Bavaria in 1937 and studied graphic arts in Nuremberg. He gave up painting in 1972, believing it to be an artificial way of dealing with nature and began working, in his own words, “at the source itself”.

François Méchain is a sculptor and photographer, who was born in 1948 in Varaize, Charente, where he still lives and works today. After studying at the “Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts” [National Fine Arts Institute] in Bourges, he taught photography at the Fine Arts Institute in Saint-Etienne. 

Erik Samakh was born in 1959 in Saint-Georges-de-Didonne and was a real pioneer when he began to use information technology and electronics in the 1980s to create installations that were sensitive to their surroundings and to the behaviour of the public.

Rainer Gross, who was born in Berlin in 1953 and now lives in Belgium, began his artwork as a sculptor in stone, before devoting himself to wood from the middle of the 1990s. By presenting living, changing and ephemeral processes, Rainer Gross produces installations with fluid shapes, which are sometimes graphic and sometimes organic.

Patrick Blanc is the inventor of plant walls, which enable the introduction of biodiversity onto the concrete walls of our towns. This ingenious concept breaks down the traditional opposition of town and nature. The plant wall was born out of the observation of plants in their natural state and requires great botanical knowledge.

Luzia Simons was born in Quixadà, Cearà (Brazil) in 1953 and she lives and works in Berlin and Stuttgart (Germany). She is represented by the Nara Roesler Gallery, São Paulo and the Andrieu Gallery, Berlin and exhibits regularly in Germany, France and Brazil.

Victoria Klotz was born in 1969 and now lives in the Central Pyrenees. Since 1997 she has been doing visual arts work, based on her personal experience of the “wild” lands. Reworking predatory strategies, such as lying in wait, approaching, trapping and camouflage, she designs devices for guidance, observation, listening and reading for the spectator-listener.