Reinhard Mucha was born in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1950 and studied with Klaus Rinke at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, where he began to develop his highly complex artistic language that would find full form in a number of seminal installations in Europe and the US. These include Gladbeck, his solo exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris in 1986; Das Deutschlandgerät at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990, since 2002 at Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf; Dokumente I – IV at documenta IX, Kassel in 1992; Mutterseelenallein at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt a. M. in 1991-1999, and again since 2009 at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; Wartesaal at documenta X, Kassel in 1997; and Stockholmer Raum, Für Rafael Moneo, 1998 at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm and at Luhring Augustine, New York. One of the more recent exhibitions dedicated to Mucha’s work was held at the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart in Switzerland in 2016. Throughout Mucha’s artistic production of the past four decades run themes of collective identity, memory, nationalism, the psychology of architecture and institutional power, the museum as the locus for the creation of history, and the merging of industrial, historical and political landscapes. His complex work penetrates several dualities: connectivity and isolation, temporality and permanence, intimate narrative and national history; progress and stasis.
Mucha’s work is included in the permanent collections of numerous international public institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Staatlich Museen zu Berlin / Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Musée national d’art modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Städelmuseum, Frankfurt a. M.; Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Glenstone Collection, Potomac; and Kunstmuseum Basel. Mucha currently resides and works in Düsseldorf.
Mucha currently lives in Düsseldorf and in Saint-Haon-le-Vieux, France.