The Cologne-based artist Walter Dahn, a central protagonist of the “Neue Wilde”, died on November 7, 2024. Born in 1954 in St. Tönis near Krefeld in the Lower Rhine region, Dahn studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in the 1970s and was one of Joseph Beuys' youngest master students at the age of 25. His multi-layered oeuvre - based on painting and later expanded to include photography, video, collage, sound recordings and installations - moves in the field of tension between art, music and pop culture products.

In the early 1980s, Dahn was a member of the artist community “Mülheimer Freiheit”, which formed in a backyard studio in Cologne away from the Düsseldorf academy sphere: “The so-called ‘Neue Wilden’ often draw on the punk mentality, they are often connected to this scene through music and fanzines [...]. A large proportion of these brush punks are between 25 and 32 years old, most of them have completed a thorough course of study with Beuys and other renowned artist professors. [...] Some have been tinkering or painting for a good five years and are now experiencing their breakthrough as the zeitgeist confirms them.” (Klaus Hoffmann: The pirates are on the ship, in: Mühlheimer Freiheit. Die Seefahrt und der Tod, exhib. Cat. Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven / Kunstverein Wolfsburg, 1981).

Driven by the gallery owner Paul Maenz, the short-lived association of Neo-Expressionists around Dahn, Hans Peter Adamski, Peter Bömmel, Jiří Georg Dokoupil, Gerard Kevers and Gerhard Naschberger experienced a meteoric rise in the West German art scene in the early 1980s - and on the art market in the Rhineland. The much-described “hunger for pictures” was awakened and brought young German painting to the attention of the international scene.

Rudi Fuchs, who as artistic director showed particular openness to the new trends in painting, exhibited Walter Dahn and his closest artistic companion Jiří Georg Dokoupil at documenta 7 in 1982. Dahn was represented in the exhibition with a total of six large-format paintings that exemplify the anarchic spirit of his expressive, spontaneous painting. These included, for example: “Einen Besen fressen” (1981, dispersion on nettle, 200 x 150 cm), “Raucherbein” (1982, dispersion on nettle, 160 x 200 cm), “Der Baum (für Beuys)” (1982, dispersion on nettle, 200 x 165 cm), and “Salto mortale” (1982, dispersion on nettle, 150 x 200 cm).

As part of the exhibition “about: documenta”, the latter painting, “Salto mortale”, can currently be seen at the Neue Galerie in Kassel.  

From 1995 to 2017, Walter Dahn held a professorship for painting at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK).