1950 born in Singen (Germany)
1970–76 Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (masters: Peter Brünning, Joseph Beuys)
1972 As a member of the League Against Imperialism and the Vietnam Committee of the Kunstakademie, sentenced to 7 months with a 3-year suspension; Commencement of agitational art – works on paper
1977–81 Landscape and cemetary gardener in Büderich near Düsseldorf
1980 Presents his shadow cuttings for the first time in Bochum
1981 Work for the FIU (Free International University)
1982 Documenta 7: “I killed Anne Frank”
1988 German Pavilion of the 43rd Venice Biennale: “House of Weaponlessness”
1991–95 AB (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) “Disorderliness equals its Measure or Proportion”, Zürich, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Budapest, Antwerp, Sarajevo, Belgrade
1997 Pictures of Germany – Art from a Country Divided, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin
2000 Art for Everyone, From DEM 5 and Up, Museum Marl, Marl
2001 Carved in Wood, Museum Bochum, Bochum
“Real, without lies, sure and true.” (Tabula Smaragdina 7)
“Divide the land from the fire, the rough from the refined, gently, with competence.” (T.S.7)
Felix Droese builds the traditions of the humanities into his socially extraordinarily sensitive works. The anthroposophical approach to the notion of existence, and the systematization of the constituents of life and death are the intensive themes of Droese’s entire oeuvre. “Intersections / Schnittlinien” (1998), exhibited here, with the decapitated imperial eagle and the rolled-off globe, places an entire society into a corrected picture, from which it would be possible to take off, without lies, into a weaponless world without power struggles. The two other exhibited carton cuttings also work with analogies, symbologies and references. The works owned by the museum, the until now never shown “Fly bird! / Vogel flieg!” (1980) and “Firelily / Feuerlilie” (1980), also bear an agitational nature and with a practically zen nakedness document an “authentic world”, in opposition to that of today.
A studio film of Felix Droese is included in the exhibition. “The Animal on the threshhold / Das Tier an der Schwelle” (1998) introduces the artist during the construction of a sculpture-installation.
