Thomas Baumgärtel

Primarily, he is probably the "Banana Sprayer". Secondly, perhaps just "the" artist. Or maybe it complies with the chicken and the famous egg? Since 1986, when the first spray banana was released by Thomas Baumgärtel, it runs like a red thread through his artworks. "Everything banana" one might think if one looks at the vita of Cologne artist.

Give art bananas!
Bavarian television compared him to Robin Hood: "A mysterious art rebel, the Robin Hood of the zeitgeist, who lays the elitist and commercialized structures of the international art scene bare." We do not know if Robin Hood had bananas in his luggage. But with just these fights Thomas Baumgärtel, also known as the "Banana Sprayer", true to the motto: With bananas for the freedom of art. And as it is sorely needed to engage for this repeatedly even 30 years after the first sprayed banana, points the Charlie Hebdo-Banana out - a Baumgärtel project with regards to the assassination in the editorial department of the Parisian satirical magazine. But this is just one of many bananas in the diverse creative artwork of the artist, who studied art and psychology.

Baumgärtel bananas as a quality seal of the art scene
After 1986, when the first banana sprayed in stencil technique marked an art venue, in the subsequent years many more followed. Meanwhile, more than 4,000 bananas created by Baumgärtel worldwide draw attention to valuable places of art. The yellow fruits are certainly good signposts. Moreover, they are traded as a "quality seal and unofficial logo" in the art scene.

The public space as easel
Baumgärtel like no other understands to pick up, break up and re-define the boundaries of performance art, the separation between action and image work. In 2001 he so turned the facade of a house in Duisburg into a "banana house" in collaboration with the painter Dieter Siegel-Pieper. In 2012 he created a peace banana out of chalk spray at the Cologne Cathedral for the Cologne Youth Council.

Not "all banana": About acrylic series and “Phoenix from the Ashes”
But not everything is "all banana" at Thomas Baumgärtel. In 1996 he founded the studio community CAP Cologne with other artists. Moreover, he is active with "Könige der Herzen" and has been teaming up with THITZ and MS Bastian since 1998. It is the goal that "Phoenix from the Ashes" - a sculpture made of steel at the smelting furnace Dortmund-Hörde - will soar 30 meters in the future. Thomas Baumgärtel works on this project since 2008.

There are undoubtedly his rebellious spray zeal, the happenings and the performances with which he generates buzz. But his works such as acrylic series like "Goldstücke" (since 2005) or "Menschenmassen", "Holocaust" and "Städtebilder", show that in fact not "all is banana". But we are still waiting for his action "Banana in front of the Brandenburger Tor" in Berlin, because it is allowed to fight for the freedom of art every day.