(*1940 Berlin, DE) Financed his studies of architecture at Universität Hannover with dishwashing and selling ice cream, until in 1961 he founded his “Werbezentrale für Totalkunst & Banalismus“, (later: “Kunstpraxis”) and exhibited himself in a glass box as “Timm Ulrichs, Erstes Lebendes Kunstwerk”. He took it from there and became Germany’s – and probably the world’s – first “Totalkünstler“. Among other smart, witty and innovative concepts he was among the first to use his body as object and canvas for his art. In 1963 he walked naked over an empty field during a thunderstorm, just carrying a metal antenna as “Menschlicher Blitzableiter“. In 1979, he spent ten hours between the two halves of a carved giant boulder (“Der Findling“). Tattoos have become part of this artistic practice since 1974, when he had a target handpoked on his breast by a foreign legionnaire of the Spanish Civil War. In 2020 Ulrichs was honored with the Käthe Kollwitz Prize for his life's work. Ulrichs isa pioneer of tattoos in the visual arts and wears a total of five tattoo artworks on his own body.
