Vincent van Volkmer (1933-2025) - No. 1829

Original painting by the American minimalist painter and bee activist Vincent van Volkmer (1933-2025).

Title: “No. 1829”
Medium: Acrylic on wood
Year: 1985
Size: 38 x 26 cm (4.5 cm thick), including the wooden frame which is painted black.
Signed: Yes, on the front, lower left monogrammed (three interlocking “V” letters)
Certificate of authenticity: Yes, the artist’s characteristic certificate of authenticity is on the back.
Condition: acceptable (see photos)

Vincent van Volkmer was an American artist, minimalist and activist, whose multifaceted life spanned from 1933 to 2025. Born during a forest fire in Los Angeles, he grew up in a wealthy New York family and moved in the company of influential cultural icons throughout his life. In the 1950s he befriended Jackson Pollock before, after military service, studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Otto Pankok and establishing contacts with Günther Uecker. His unconventional biography took him from journeys with the Minimal Art pioneer Frank Stella to the Orient, and to a commune with David Bowie in 1970s Berlin. After periods in Japan, where he trained as a Bonsai master, he eventually died in March 2025 in Hamburg. His painterly work is characterized by a dialogue between geometric rigor and pop cultural influences, and is primarily categorized in art history as Minimalism, Hard-edge, and Color Field painting. van Volkmer’s paintings radically break with the emotional, gestural brushwork of Abstract Expressionism. Instead, strongly reduced, highly contrasting color palettes—especially combinations of black, yellow, and orange—along with mathematically calculated line structures prevail. To emphasize the objective character of the images, the artist usually refrained from descriptive titles and instead equipped his large-format canvases with purely serial, numerical designations. In postwar art, van Volkmer plays a significant bridging role, because he connected the principles of American abstraction with European modernism. He brought the Stella-influenced maxim that a painting is only what you see on it to Europe, but later in his career he deliberately dissolved this formal rigidity. Van Volkmer expanded painting into conceptual and performative art by linking his mathematical visual worlds with ecological activism. He became legendary for his humorous yet political appearances as a “bee activist” at international art fairs, bringing nature philosophy and social responsibility into focus within the otherwise impersonal Minimal Art.”}){