Rebecca Horn was born in the midst of war, in 1944 in Michelstadt, Hesse, Germany. While Horn has not discussed her childhood or family in depth, introducing only snippets, we know that her parents were industrialists and her uncle – to whom she was close – was an artist. She has expressed a deep love for the Romanian governess who looked after her as a young child recalling that it was the governess who spent much time drawing with her at around three or four years old. Growing up in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War affected Horn greatly, and as such the experience penetrates many of her artworks to come. After the war, Horn and her fellow Germans could hardly speak their own language because, blamed for the atrocities of the older generation, they had become a hated people. Horn learnt to speak both French and English but she preferred drawing as a way to communicate that remained untainted and universal.
As a young girl, Horn read Johann Valentin Andreae's The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (1616) an early, highly symbolic and evocative book that explored the transformation of the soul. She also read Raymond Roussel's Locus Solus (1914) in which visually elaborate stories were woven around the absurd inventions of a scientist. Both books are understood to have nurtured Horn's interest in alchemy, Surrealism, machinic invention, and absurdity. Indeed, in the same celestial and otherworldly vein, Horn's father told her stories of dragons, goblins, and witches, setting the stories in their own local environment (perhaps he was a fan of The Brothers Grimm). Although likely an early source of inspiration for the artist, she has also said herself that her father's stories often triggered deep anxiety. Her father also loved opera, which may have influenced the artist's important relationship to sound and music.
Early Training and Work
At University Horn initially studied economics and philosophy, having been advised to do so by her pragmatic parents. However, after six months Horn – initially in secret – began taking art classes on the side. She started full-time study at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg in 1963, much to the disapproval of her parents. Her drawings at art school principally explored the female body and ways that it could be transformed. Many of Horn's appendages for the body, realised in later performance and video works, can be found in sketchbooks from as early as 1966.
It was at art school that Horn began to make large-scale sculptures using mainly polyester and fibreglass. Sadly, due to producing these works without using a mask she became very ill in 1964. She went to hospital and then spent a very isolated, long, and tragic year convalescing in a sanatorium. Shockingly, whilst Horn was recovering from lung poisoning, both of her parents died. It was at this time, Horn said, that she "started to develop ideas for communicating with people through my work." She designed and made body sculptures out of fabric while she was ill, these were appendages to and extensions of the body that materialized later in various forms, including a Unicorn horn, feathers made into a mask that covered the face, and a mask with protruding pencils that the wearer could draw with. In an interview Horn said, "I wanted to pass on this experience of being tied to a bed." Arm Extensions (1968) was her first body extension that she said turned the wearer "into an earthbound object."
What interests me most is how I can use creativity to maintain openness and curiosity. I have never discarded my yearning for change. I am interested in scientific developments and the effort involved in drawing together the most diverse forms of experience. We suffer from fragmentation and isolation. Only once we have overcome this condition and people from all walks of life join together will we be able to foster new hope."
The solitary nature of human existence has become a recurring theme for Horn, the question of how one contends and lives with this condition, whilst at the same time endeavouring to defend and communicate with groups of people.
Sources:
Conceptual art & fashion in the 21st century/ Shirin Abedini Rad
www.Rebecca-horn.de
www.tate.org.uk