1942 | Born in Kiel |
1960 | co-editor of the magazine Rhinozeros |
1960-65 | he and his brother published the avant-garde, experimental art and literature magazine in their own publishing house |
1965-91 | editor of the magazine Das Kunstwerk, published in Baden-Baden |
1965-70 | Member of the artist group SYN (with Bernd Berner, Klaus Jürgen-Fischer and Eduard Micus) |
1968 | Villa Romana Prize, Florence |
1971-72 | a scholarship at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris |
| Several national and international guest lectureships (New York 1966-68, Braunschweig 1969, Frankfurt/Main 1970, Sydney 1976-77, Stuttgart 1989-90) |
1979 | the Villa Massimo Prize, Rome |
1982 | the Prize Artist in Baden-Baden of the Society of Friends of Young Art Baden-Baden |
1991 | Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany |
1992-2008 | professorship for painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg |
2007 | Hans Thoma Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg |
2016 | died in Baden-Baden |
Since the beginning of his artistic work, Rolf-Gunter Dienst has used color as a picture-determining and sensually stimulating element. On closer inspection, the images reveal themselves as a tangle of abbreviations repeated like lines, reminiscent of East Asian characters, but naming or directly depicting nothing. The macro- and microstructure, which unite to form an overall sound, provoke a change of perspective. On (or under?) the pulsating surface, the scriptural abbreviations claim the viewer's attention, slowing his gaze and directing it to the energetic and narrative details.
After a phase in the 1970s and 1980s in which color increasingly evaporated and almost monochrome images emerged, the works of the last 15 years radiate a refreshing vitality, characterized by the dialogue of color surfaces and bands lying next to and among each other.