Martin Spengler Germany, b. 1974

Martin Spengler was born in 1974 in Cologne and lives and works in Munich. Between 2003 and 2008 he studied painting at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen in the class of Professor Karin Kneffel, one of Germany's most influential figurative painters. During an Erasmus year in 2006 and 2007 he studied sculpture at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien under Professor Manfred Pernice. He then continued his studies at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, again under Professor Karin Kneffel, graduating in 2010 as Meisterschüler, the highest distinction of the German academy system, and subsequently serving as her artistic assistant from 2010 to 2011. This formation across painting, sculpture, and material experimentation is directly reflected in the hybrid character of his mature practice, which resists easy categorisation as either painting or sculpture.

Spengler's work centres on large-format picture reliefs and freestanding sculptures made from corrugated cardboard, a material he has developed into a medium of remarkable expressive range. Following a preliminary sketch, he works his way into a block of corrugated cardboard with scalpel-like tools, carving layer by layer to reveal and construct form. His motifs, contemporary cityscapes, skyscrapers, facades, towers, Gothic cathedrals, and architectural grids, are drawn from image files and sketches that serve as structural models rather than templates for reproduction. The resulting works play between the faithful rendering of recognisable structures and their total dissolution into pattern and surface. Spengler is not concerned with mimesis: he understands each work as the product of an epistemological achievement, a material investigation into what lies behind the visible order of things. The corrugated cardboard, with its industrial associations and its layered internal structure, becomes a metaphor for the complexity concealed within apparently simple surfaces.

Spengler has received sustained institutional support throughout his career. He held a scholarship from the Cusanuswerk, Bonn, from 2005 to 2010; an Erasmus scholarship at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien in 2006 and 2007; a working scholarship in Greece awarded jointly by the Akademies of Munich and Athens in 2009; studio grants from the city of Munich in 2011 to 2015 and 2017 to 2020; and Bavarian state studio grants from 2013 to 2016. His work was selected for the "New Positions" programme at Art Cologne in 2018, one of the fair's most prestigious platforms for emerging artists. A monograph was published by the S. Spiegelberger Stiftung in 2013.

Spengler's exhibition history spans museums, Kunstvereine, and institutional venues across Germany and beyond. Solo exhibitions include presentations at the Städtische Galerie Remscheid (2012), the Neuer Kunstverein Wuppertal (2012), the Kunstverein Ebersberg (2018), and the Lippische Gesellschaft für Kunst e.V., Detmold (2019). Group exhibitions have included "Arte e Design: Vivere e Pensare in Carta e Cartone" at the Museo Diocesano, Milan (2011); "Turmbau II" at the Dominikanermuseum Rottweil (2017); "Radziwill und die Gegenwart" at the Kunsthalle Emden (2018 to 2019) and the Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen (2019); and "Inspiration Meisterwerk" at Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden (2019). He participated in the Prague Triennale in 2008.

KORNFELD Galerie Berlin has presented Martin Spengler's work in Berlin on multiple occasions. He was a guest in the gallery's group exhibition "Berlin In Mind" in 2017, and his solo exhibition "Creatio Ex Aliquo" was presented at KORNFELD Galerie Berlin in September 2023, bringing together new reliefs and sculptures in his distinctive corrugated cardboard technique. His work has also been presented through the gallery at art karlsruhe. Spengler's practice continues to develop through an ongoing investigation of architectural form, material structure, and the epistemological possibilities of slow, manual making.