_{Sfeir-Semler Gallery Hamburg, 2008}

Hans Haacke (b. 1936, Cologne) lives and works in New York since 1965. He studied at the State Art Academy in Kassel and at the Tyler School of Fine Arts in Philadelphia supported by a Fulbright Fellowship. From 1963 until 1965, Haacke taught amongst others at the College of Education in Kettwig (Germany), but returned to the U.S. subsequently where he taught at the University of Washington, the Rutgers University, the Philadelphia College of Art and eventually at Cooper Union. Haacke held lectures and was a visiting professor at several international universities. In 1998 the Bauhaus University of Weimar awarded Haacke with an honorary doctorate.

Haackes early works as a conceptual artist focussed on social, physical and environmental systems and processes. Some of his works even draw near Land Art. But his focal topic remained researching and unfolding sociopolitical structures and such inherent to the art world. Haacke not only disclosed speculations with real estate in his work Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971, but also expresses his critical stance towards the art world with regard to its relations with corporations and corporate leaders. For example Haacke did so, when he revealed the provenance of Édouard Manets Bunch of Asparagus (1974) or laid open via his painting Cowboy with Cigarette that the Cubism exhibition at the MOMA New York in 1989/90 was sponsored by Phillip Morris, a tobacco company. Since the late 1980s Haackes increasingly uses painting and large installations to express his political thoughts and institutional critique. 

Haacke had many solo exhibitions, e.g. at the New Museum of Contemporary Art New York, the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Deichtorhallen Hamburg or the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. He has also partaken at the documenta in Kassel several times (1972, 1982, 1987, 1997, 2017). His works are represented in many international public collections for example the MOMA New York, the SMAK Gent, the Tate London, or the Fotomuseum Winterthur. Haacke won several art prizes as the Golden Lion (shared with Nam June Paik) at 43. Biennale di Venezia (1993), Prize of Helmut-Kraft-Stiftung Stuttgart (1998), the Peter-Weiss-Preis Bochum (2004), the Arnold-Bode-Preis (2019) and the Goslarer Kaiserring (2020).