Peter Zimmermann is a German painter known for digitally manipulating art catalogues, found photos, and book covers until they are no longer representative of their original form. Zimmermann uses these digitized abstractions as projections to be reproduced by pouring and applying pigmented resin and acrylic over canvas. He is especially famous for his series, Book Covers, which conceptualized artwork on classic books and art catalogues in the 1980s, as well as Blob Paintings. Like the Neo-Geo artist Peter Halley, Zimmerman uses the language of Modernist Color Field painters as a foil to produce work that hides meanings and intentions in plain sight. He was born in 1956 in Freiburg, Germany, and went on to study at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart, graduating in 1984. He has exhibited with Galerie Michael Janssen in Germany and Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris. Today, Zimmermann’s work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Neue Galerie Graz in Austria, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, and the New Orleans Museum of Modern Art, among others. Zimmermann lives and works in Cologne, Germany.
