Picture "Hydrangeas in a Water Glass" (1979)

Peter Dreher (1932 - 2020) was born in Mannheim in 1932. He studied under Erich Heckel at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe and was later a professor at its branch in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he lived and worked until his death in 2020.

From 1974 to 2017, the artist produced more than 5,000 works showing an empty water glass in the work cycle “Tag um Tag guter Tag I (Nachtserie)” and “Tag um Tag guter Tag II (Tagserie)”.

Dreher said about his very conceptual way of working: “The deliberate restriction to the same motif is not a sacrifice for me and is also not based on the idea of creating a particularly crazy concept to increase my recognition value or to distinguish myself from my colleagues. I chose the supposed limitation in order to focus all my energy on what is really important and decisive for me: painting.”

The artist's works can be found in internationally renowned collections, including the MMK Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt am Main, the Frieder Burda Museum in Baden-Baden, the Pinault Collection and the Art Institute of Chicago.