Christopher Lehmpfuhl Germany, b. 1972

Christopher Lehmpfuhl was born in 1972 in Berlin, where he has lived and worked throughout his career. He received his first formal painting instruction between 1985 and 1992 under Wolfgang Prehm, before enrolling at the Hochschule der Künste (HdK) in Berlin in 1992. From 1993 to 1998 he studied in the class of Professor Klaus Fußmann, one of the most influential figurative painters in postwar German art, and in 1998 was appointed Meisterschüler — master student — by Fußmann, the highest distinction the German academy system confers. That same year he received the GASAG Art Prize Berlin, marking the beginning of a sustained record of institutional recognition.

Lehmpfuhl's practice is defined by an absolute fidelity to the plein-air tradition. He works exclusively on location, in oil, confronting his subjects directly and without mediation. His paintings accumulate layer upon layer of impasto, the surface itself becoming a record of time, light, and meteorological condition. Berlin is his primary subject and his most persistent one: the city's waterways, construction sites, historic squares, and monumental architecture have occupied him across decades, most notably in the long-running Schlossplatz cycle, which documented the reconstruction of the Berlin Palace, and in the Berlin Plein Air series spanning 1995 to the present. Beyond Berlin, Lehmpfuhl has undertaken painting expeditions to Iceland, Lapland, Australia, Ireland, Tuscany, California, China, Georgia, South Korea, Indonesia, and South Africa, among many other destinations, producing bodies of work that extend his investigation of light and landscape across radically different geographies and climates.

Lehmpfuhl's work is held in significant institutional and private collections. His institutional recognition includes the Franz-Joseph-Spiegler-Prize at Mochental Castle, Ehingen (2000); the Art Prize "Salzburg in neuen Ansichten" (2001); a scholarship from the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich (2006); the Art Prize of the Cultural Foundation of the Sparkasse Karlsruhe (2011); the Tree Art Prize 2018 of the Schleswig-Holstein State Museums at Gottorf Castle; the Wolfgang-Klähn Prize (2019); and the Art Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Economy (2013 and 2021). In 2004 he was a finalist for the European Art Prize at the Triennale in Milan. He is a member of the Berlin Artists' Association, the Künstlersonderbund, the Neue Gruppe Munich, and the North German Realists.

Lehmpfuhl's exhibition history spans major institutions across Germany and beyond. His 2012 retrospective "Berlin Plein Air 1995 – 2012" at the Alte Münze, Berlin, was opened by the Federal Minister of State for Culture, Bernd Neumann. Solo exhibitions followed at Museum Würth, Künzelsau (2019), the Gottorf Castle Riding Hall, Schleswig (2021), Museo Würth, La Rioja, Spain (2021), Würth Forum, Arlesheim (2022), and Art Forum Würth, Capena (2024 and 2025). In 2018, a collaboration with Bertelsmann brought his work into the Berlin U-Bahn line 5. A major survey exhibition was held at the Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesmuseum Schloss Gottorf in 2022.

KORNFELD Galerie Berlin has been a consistent partner in presenting Christopher Lehmpfuhl's work to collectors and institutions. The gallery has hosted multiple exhibitions of his paintings, including "Licht/Blicke" in 2020, the group exhibition with Natela Iankoshvili, and "More Light" in autumn 2025. Lehmpfuhl's work has also been presented through the gallery's programme at art fairs and in collaboration with institutional venues including the Tertianum Premium Residence, Berlin, where "Im Wandel des Lichts" was shown from October to November 2025.

Lehmpfuhl has taught at the Staatliche Zeichenakademie in Hanau, the Vulkaneifel Academy in Steffeln, and has been a recurring lecturer at the Akademie für Malerei, Berlin, and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Kolbermoor. A monograph, "Berlin Plein Air. Painting 1995 – 2010," was published by Dom Publishers in 2011. In 2023 he completed his first stained-glass window, installed in a wine cellar in Vallocaia, Tuscany, signalling an ongoing expansion of a practice that, after more than three decades, continues to find new forms.