Mary Bauermeister was a German Avant-Garde artist born in 1934 in Frankfurt am Main. Bauermeister worked mainly with assemblages and collages, but her oeuvre contains sculpture, drawing, installation, performance and music as well, all created in a highly experimental manner. Bauermeister contemplated New Age spirituality and esoteric issues of how information is transferrable through society in her work, and played a key role in the development of performance art.
Bauermeister attended school in Cologne, where drawing teacher Günther Ott first recognized and fostered her talent. In 1954 Bauermeister went on to study at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm but found the coursework too restrictive and transferred after one semester to the Staatliche Schule für Kunst und Handwerk in Saarbrücken. However, a couple of years later Bauermeister returned to Cologne and took up residence as a freelance artist. In 1960 Bauermeister began renting a flat in an attic in the heart of the Old Town of Cologne, which quickly became known as a place for Avant Garde musical and artistic events, as well as the location for some of the first performances of artists who later formed the Fluxus movement.
Bauermeister later moved to New York in 1962, inspired by the work of American artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In 1963 Bauermeister signed a contract with Galeria Bonino, leading to her breakthrough in the New York art market. Throughout the 1960s Bauermeister’s work was featured in the exhibitions of and purchased by prominent New York museums—which all regularly referred to Bauermeister as an American artist. However, in the early 1970s Bauermeister returned to living primarily in Europe, taking up residence outside Cologne. For the rest of her career, Bauermeister’s work was exhibited at and continues to be exhibited at and collected by major institutions around the world. Her work has been the subject of more than 50 solo exhibitions and 200 group exhibitions.