Miron Schmückle (born 1966 in Sibiu/Hermannstadt) is a German-Romanian artist, stage designer and cultural researcher. He lives and works as a freelance artist in Berlin (Germany) since 2008.
In his drawings, Schmückle develops a hybrid, botanical world of forms that moves between hyperrealism and escapism of reality through his interest in art history as well as his preoccupation with non-European flora and fauna. This still finds application above all in his scientific-botanical plant still lifes, whose complex structures Schmückle does not copy from natural models, but composes independently.
Life and artistic development
Schmückle grew up in Romania during the Ceaușescu dictatorship. According to Schmückle's autobiographical texts, his interest in art history was aroused by a joint visit to the Brukenthal Museum with his father in the 1970s. Here he was impressed by the paintings of the polymath Joris Hoefnagel with his allegorical cabinet miniatures from 1597.
In 1988 he left Romania and emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany. Between 1991 and 1996 he studied Experimental Painting at the Muthesius Academy of Art in Kiel (Germany), among others with Renate Anger. In 1994 he joined the performance artist Marina Abramović at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg. Since, in Schmückle's view, conceptual art was very dominant at universities in the mid-1990s and drawing was not taught at university, he taught himself to do this independently. His self-study drawings eventually serve as his final project at Muthesius.
Between 1995 and 1996, Schmückle held a teaching position at the Saint Petersburg Theatre Academy in the field of installation art.
When the art market collapsed due to the financial crisis in 2008 and commissions thus failed to materialise, Schmückle wrote his doctoral thesis, which was published at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts in 2016 under the title Una terza natura. In terms of content, his doctoral thesis deals with the cabinet miniatures of Joris Hoefnagel.
Exhibitions (selection)
Solo exhibitions
1997 – Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg (Germany): Hortus conclusus
1997 – Kunsthalle Kiel, Kiel (Germany): over a long season
2001 – Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt am Main (Germany): Super Cascade Improved Mixed 2002 – Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (Germany): Fountains of Joy. Improved Formula 2004 – Gallery Anita Beckers, Frankfurt am Main (Germany): Capriccio 2005 – Gallery Dörrie*Priess, Hamburg (Germany): New Works 2007 – Gallery Emmanuel Post, Leipzig (Germany): de naturae corporis fabrica 2007 – Gallery Rena Bransten, San Francisco (USA): Rococo Revisited 2009 – Brukenthal Museum, Sibiu (Romania): The Strife of Love in a Dream 2010 – Gallery Dörrie*Priess, Hamburg (Germany): illectus eram 2011 – Gallery Manzoni Schäper, Berlin (Germany): As You Desire Me 2016 – Kunstmuseum Bayreuth, Bayreuth (Germany): Una terza natura 2017 – Anca Poteraşu Gallery, Bucharest (Romania): Non saturatur oculus visu 2023 – Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main (Germany): Miron Schmückle. Flesh for Fantasy