Rune Mields, Self-Taught German Conceptual Artist, Dies at 91
German conceptual artist Rune Mields died on June 27 in Cologne at age 91, according to a report first carried by the German Press Agency. Born in Münster in 1935 and self-taught after training as a bookseller, she gained attention for her late-1960s and early-’70s “Röhrenbilder” (Pipe Paintings), monochrome canvases with hyperreal geometric forms, and later developed a decades-long practice drawing on mathematics and cross-cultural ordering systems. Mields participated in Documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977, won the Gabriele Münter Prize in 2000, and received solo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Bonn and Ludwig Forum Aachen on the occasion of her 90th birthday. Her work is held by institutions including Museum Ludwig (Cologne), Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, ZKM Karlsruhe, the Busch-Reisinger Museum (Cambridge, Massachusetts), the Nationalgalerie (Berlin), and Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, and she will be buried in the Kassel artists’ cemetery in a grave she designed in 1992.
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