René Block

Born in 1942 near Düsseldorf.

Opened a gallery in Berlin in 1964 at the age of 22, whose first exhibitions and performances were arranged by then young artists as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik a.o.

As Germany's youngest gallery owner he was admitted in 1967 to the "Association of Progressive German Art Dealers", which organized the first art fairs in Cologne.

In 1974 he was awarded with the art prize of the German Critics Association for his ten-year gallery program in Berlin.. In the same year he opened an exhibition space in New York with "I like America and America likes me" by Joseph Beuys.

At the same time Block started his work as an independent curator, he curated "Downtown Manhattan: SoHo", 1976, and "Für Augen und Ohren", 1980, for the Berlin Festival and the Akademie der Künste Berlin as well as, "Art Allemagne Aujourd'hui" for the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981.

In 1982 Block started his work for the Berlin Artists Residence Program of the DAAD. Until 1992 he was in charge of the visual artists and composers and organized many exhibitions and concerts (i.e. the Festival of Music "Inventionen").

From 1993 until 1995 he determined the program of the exhibition service at the Institute for Foreign Relations (IFA), which is responsible for the presentation of German Art abroad.

The most important exhibitions organized by Block in recent years were:

1990 "The Readymade Boomerang", 8. Biennial of Sydney
1991 „Medienkunst", National Gallery, Seoul
1992 "Mit dem Kopf durch die Wand", Statens Museum, Copenhagen
1993 „Über Malerei", an exhibition for the 300th anniversary of the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Wien
1995 „Orient/ation", 4. İstanbul Biennale
1997 „Pro Lidice", Museum of Fine Arts, Prague
1998 "Echolot", Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel
2000 „Eurafrica", 3. Kwangju Biennial, Korea
„Das Lied von der Erde", Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel

In 1994 he received the Danish „Arthur Kopcke-Preis" in Copenhagen (after Lawrence Weiner (1991), Per Kirkeby (1992) and Ilja Kabakov (1993).

Since July 1997 René Block is the director of the Kunsthalle Museum Fridericianum in Kassel