With branches in Berlin and Leipzig, Galerie EIGEN + ART represents more than 37 international artists working in the media of painting, film and video, photography, installation, and sculpture, as well as in the field of Concept Art and Performance.
An important interest of the gallery is to accompany the careers of artists from the beginning, long-term and continuously. This is one of the distinctive characteristics of the gallery: many of our artists have been with us since the program was launched and are still represented by us; new generations of artists have joined them.
Gerd Harry Lybke founded the Galerie EIGEN + ART on 10 April 1983 at Körnerplatz 8 in Leipzig in the former East Germany. In the early years, it was an illegal meeting point where exhibitions, Happenings, and Performances were held; but the gallery quickly developed into a well-known address for an ambitious exhibition program, already with the participation of artists who are still represented in the program, like Carsten Nicolai, Neo Rauch, and Olaf Nicolai. Today, EIGEN + ART is the only gallery from the former East Germany that acts internationally.
The gallery gained more space in 1985 by moving to Fritz-Austel-Straße 31 (today Bornaische Straße). Now the workshop and exhibition rooms were in one location. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1990 Gerd Harry Lybke and several of the gallery’s artist friends visited the international art metropoles: in 1990, he opened a temporary gallery in Tokyo, and later in Paris (1991), Berlin (1992), New York (1993), and London (1994). In parallel, the gallery took part in the most important art fairs in Frankfurt, Basel, Cologne, New York, Berlin, Miami, London, and Paris.
Left Galerie EIGEN + ART Berlin, right Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig
In 1992, the branch at Auguststraße 26 in Berlin was opened, an important step and today a central site of the gallery for an international public.
In 2005, the Leipzig gallery moved to the grounds of the former cotton spinning mill in Plagwitz. Conceptually large-scale exhibitions are held in exhibition rooms totalling about 480 square meters, while in Berlin focused presentations are realized on three storeys.
In March 2012, the gallery opened a third branch, the EIGEN + ART LAB in the former Jewish Girls’ School, just a few steps away from the Berlin gallery. With the founding of the EIGEN + ART LAB, which moved in January 2015 to Torstraße 220 in Berlin, space was created where a next generation of artists could realize their projects in a gallery and exhibition context, establish relationships, and integrate themselves as young positions in the gallery’s program.
The gallery implements this idea internationally when it works together with young artists on site in South Africa, Korea, Taiwan, China, Ukraine, USA, Great Britain, and Israel. The opening of pop-up galleries and participation in art fairs in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Cape Town show that the gallery is active both locally and in global contexts.
In June 2012, together with the artist Neo Rauch and the city of Aschersleben, Galerie EIGEN + ART founded the Graphics Foundation Neo Rauch. The goal of the foundation is to preserve and maintain the entire graphic oeuvre of the artist Neo Rauch in the form of an extensive collection of lithographies and other graphic works that Neo Rauch has created since 1988.
Along with that, Galerie EIGEN + ART oversees the estate of the Concrete artist Karl-Heinz Adler (1927–2018) of Dresden, thus ensuring that the oeuvre of the almost 90-year-old artist received the recognition it deserves.
In July 2021, the EIGEN + ART gallery established a digital space, the platform EIGEN + ART Plus, to share videos, interviews, and publications on its artists and projects internationally and around the clock.
Artists from the gallery’s program exhibited solo presentations at the Venice Biennale in the Israeli pavilion in 2005, the German pavilion in 2015, and the Mongolian pavilion in 2019; they also participated in international group exhibitions, for example the documenta Kassel and Athens, the Biennales in Venice, Berlin, Istanbul, and Gwangju, the international Art Festival in Sapporo, and the Yokohama and Hangzhou Trienniales.
Over the last forty years, the gallery has constantly grown and has continuously expanded its program with various generations of artists. It has written history and looks to the future. And the adventure is far from over.
Galerie EIGEN + ART represents:
Karl-Heinz Adler, Maja Behrmann, Akos Birkas, Birgit Brenner, Louisa Clement, Marc Desgrandchamps, Martin Eder, Tim Eitel, Martin Groß, Stefan Guggisberg, Stella Hamberg, Stef Heidhues, Jörg Herold, Christine Hill, Igor Hosnedl, Uwe Kowski, Melora Kuhn, Maix Mayer, Ryan Mosley, Lada Nakonechna, Carsten Nicolai, Olaf Nicolai, Li Qing, Neo Rauch, Ricarda Roggan, Madeleine Roger-Lacan, Nicola Samorì, Yehudit Sasportas, Titus Schade, Kai Schiemenz, David Schnell, Kristina Schuldt, Brett Charles Seiler, Annelies Štrba, Ulrike Theusner, Mirjam Völker, and Raul Walch