Bernard Lokai

Bernard Lokai (born 5 September 1960 Bohumin, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic) is a German painter. He studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and was a student of Gerhard Richter, and part of the Young Figuratives movement. He lives and works in Düsseldorf and Berlin, Germany. In 2002 he began teaching at the Freie Kunstakademie Essen in Essen in the Department of Painting and Graphics.
Life.
After his parents left the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic Bernard Lokai grew up in Düren, Germany. After finishing high school he began to study art at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1982. In 1987 he finished the academy as "Meisterschüler" of Gerhard Richter. At the academy he met the colorfield landscape painter Hans-Jörg Holubitschka, with whom he has participated in several exhibitions as part of the exhibition serial Young Figuratives.
Work.
Bernard Lokai's work incorporates the gestural brushstrokes of Abstract Expressionism and the spray paint of graffiti. His "Landscape Block" works consist of multi-panelled grids composed of eighteen 12 by 16 inch panels, each painted in the studio, then combined into a grid at random.
Art critic Mara Hoberman wrote that Bernard Lokai's Landscape Blocks depict "eighteen land-, sea-, and sky-scapes in disparate styles quoting, in turn, the brushstrokes of Monet, Turner, and Richter (his teacher), among others."