Vera MERCER

INCOMING
2026 : Munich Bavaria National Museum
2026 : Brot/ Breadmuseum Ulm

LAST EVENTS
Museum Kaiserslautern,
Museum Passau,
Bayer Erholungshaus Leverkusen
Villa Heike Berlin
Brotmuseum Ulm (Breadmuseum)

BIOGRAPHY (selection)
1936 : Born in Berlin
1958 : Training as a photographer
Marriage to the Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri
Move to Paris, contacts with the New Realists
1960 : Friendship with Eva Aeppli, Jean Tinguely’s partner
1960’s : Portraits of artists including Marcel Duchamp, Niki de Saint-Phalle and Jean Tinguely
Features on Samuel Beckett, Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol, amongst others
Assistant to the photographers at Vogue
1973 : After separating from Spoerri, she moved to Omaha with her second husband, Mark Mercer.
Owner of French Café
2006 : Back to still life photography with the 4×5 and 8×10 cameras

INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS
2025 : Retrospective ZAK Berlin Spandau
2019 : Jeté! – (avec Daniel Spoerri), Künstlerhaus Marktoberdorf
2017 : Nature morte, Bayer/Kultur im Erholungshaus, Leverkusen
2016 : Vera Mercer Sensual joie de vivre et vanitas, Bikini Berlin, Berlin
2013 : Sherry Leedy, Kansas City
Exposition florale, Bernis
2012-2013 : Rheingalerie Bonn
2012 : Galerie Jordanow, Munich
2011 : H2Openspace, Trieste, I, Bemis Centre for contemporary arts, Omaha

COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS (selection)
2024 : Group show Museum Marktoberdorf
2023 : Highlights Munich, With Elka Jordanow Galerie
2020 : Vente aux enchères, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Die Illusion der Wirklichkeit / Postes photographiques, Galerie Schlichtenmaier, Stuttgart
Les pensées montent comme des fleurs, Galerie Schlichtenmaier, Grafenau
Nature morte et pièces de jardin, Galerie Jordanow, Munich
2019 : MAGIC OF SILENCE / MAGIE DER STILLE, Johanna Brede Photokunst, Berlin
2018 : abBild, Graf & Schelble Galerie, Bâle, Suisse
2016-2017 : Blütenpracht, Neue Galerie Haus Beda, Bitburg
2016 : Mois de la photographie à Minsk 2016, Minsk,
Biélorussie
WHITE WORKS, Galerie Jordanow, Munich
2014 : WILD – Animals in Contemporary Photography, Fondation Alfred Ehrhardt, Berlin
2013 : 1ère Biennale des Artistes à la Haus der Kunst, Biennale des Artistes à la Haus der Kunst, Munich
2012 : Lost Paradise – Images de fleurs dans la photographie contemporaine Musée d art moderne Mönchehaus, Goslar
Beauté – Fleurs dans la photographie contemporaine, Tokyo Art Museum, Tôkyô
2011 : Fleurs – Fleurs dans l’art photographique contemporain, FO. NUK S Foto Kunst
Stadtforum,Innsbruck
Fleurs – Photographie contemporaine, Fondation Alfred Ehrhardt, Berlin
2010 : BEAUTÉ | Fleurs en photographie, Alexander Ochs Galleries, Pékin
BEAUTÉ The Flower Show, Artists’ Cooperative Gallery, Omaha

MUSEUMS EXHIBITIONS
2020 : “Vera Mercer – Nature morte et photographie de portrait”, Musée de la photographie Görlitz, Görlitz.
2015-2016 : “Vera Mercer – Nature morte”, Musée Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern.
2012 : “Nature Morte”, Centro de las Artes de Nuevo León, Mexique.
2012 : “Nature Morte”, Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City.
2011 : “Nature Morte”, Centro Regional de las Artes de Michoacán, Zamora, Mexique.
2010 : Exposition au Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA), Omaha, États-Unis.
1998 : “Flores”, Fototeca de Veracruz “Juan Malpica Mimendi”, Veracruz, Mexique.

I was born in Berlin in November 1936. My father, Franz Mertz, was a renowned theatre set designer and was probably my greatest influence. I qualified as a dance and gymnastics instructor and married the theatre director’s assistant, a young Swiss artist of Romanian origin named Daniel Spoerri. He and his friend Emmet Williams were at the time heavily involved in producing the monthly publication Material Poesie Concrete. Shortly afterwards, we moved to Paris, where we had many friends who later became known as the Nouveaux Réalistes. It was a very interesting period for me, and as painters and sculptors need photographers, it was quite natural that Jean Tinguely should ask me to start with his sculptures, to take up and continue photography. It also seemed to have a connection with the theatre.

After my marriage ended, my career as a photographer progressed quite rapidly. I worked with Theater Heute and various Scandinavian magazines, and produced photo reports on Beckett, Ionesco, Satyajit Ray, Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer, Marcel Duchamp and others. Later, I worked for a short time as an assistant to Peter Knapp, a photographer for Elle and Vogue in Paris. My constant interest in artists and sculptors has always kept me very busy.
Over the years, I have produced documentary photographs for numerous artists, including Eva Aeppli, Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle. In 1984, I photographed and produced a book on the works of Eva Aeppli; subsequently, I created a video of her collection in Omaha, Nebraska, which was shown at her retrospective at the Tinguely Museum in Basel in 2006.

I created my first photographic mural in the early 1960s, an indoor/outdoor installation for the car manufacturer Opel. Another large photo mural, created from images taken during the final days of the famous market stalls at Les Halles in Paris, was completed in the early 1970s. It was installed in our first restaurant, in the Old Market in Omaha, where I had moved with my second husband, Mark Mercer. In the end, we had three more restaurants, and it seemed to me that all my photographs had something to do with them, however loosely. Later, I worked for John Morford, an architect and interior designer based in Hong Kong, who has designed numerous restaurants across Asia. In 1994, I therefore created four large murals for the Park Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo, whose interior had been designed by Morford and the building by Kenzo Tange. In 1996, I produced two series of photographs for the Joyce Cafe at Exchange Square (above the Hong Kong Stock Exchange), also designed by Morford, and two further walls of photographs on the theme of Hong Kong’s markets for the Joyce Cafe on Nathan Road, Kowloon, in the Landmark building designed by Gio Ponti. This was followed by the “Flower Photos” at the Hyatt Seoul and, again with Morford, the “Water Series” in 2004 for the Plateau Spa at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong and, in 2008, the “Vegetable Series” for the Hyatt Seoul.
It was also around this time that I began exhibiting my photographs, mainly silver prints depicting café life, in galleries. In particular, I held several solo exhibitions in Mexico, starting in 1998 at the Galeria de la Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado ‘La Esmeralda’, at the Galeria ‘Rosana’ in Mexico City and at the Fototeca de Veracruz.

In 2005, I began creating the colour digital still lifes that I continue to explore today. In a way that takes me back to my early photojournalism, I work with objects I find at local farmers’ markets and flower stalls, although I am now fortunate enough to have the help of two hunters and a florist in my search for fresh and interesting subjects. The glasses, crockery and other objects in my compositions are items I have collected over time. The photographs are taken in my studios in Omaha and Paris, then printed by me in Omaha.
In 2007, I returned to Mexico with two major exhibitions in Guanajuato and Mérida showcasing my new still lifes, followed by exhibitions at the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, the Centro de las Artes Centenario in San Luis Potosí, at the Centro de las Artes Fundidora in Monterrey, the Centro de las Artes de Michoacán in Zamora, the Centro de las Artes Hidalgo in Pachuca and, in 2012, at the Centro Cultural Clavijero in Morelia. At each of these venues, I organised small workshops on still lifes with university students, who brought interesting aspects of their own local culture to their imagery. In 2010, Matthias Harder of the Helmut Newton Foundation organised what was, for me, a very significant exhibition of my portraits and still lifes at the Kommunale Galerie in Berlin, Germany, which was accompanied by a catalogue (Kehrer Verlag). The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha presented my first solo exhibition in the United States in 2011. This was followed by solo exhibitions at the Jordanow Gallery in Munich and the Werkhallen Obermann/Burkhard near Bonn, in Germany.
Europe continues to provide exhibition venues for my photographs. Two venues in Trento, Italy – Castel Pergine and the Teatro Comunale di Pergine – hosted separate photographic projects in 2014, and my work was exhibited at Copetti Antiquari in Udine. Although this was not the first time I had taken part in an international art fair, I particularly enjoyed my participation in the Milan Art Fair in 2015 and the SILOS Art Inside Venezia summer exhibition during the Biennale. In addition to a solo exhibition in the autumn at the Jordanow Gallery, I was a featured artist at the Villa Rot Museum near Ulm. In November 2015, organised by Dr Britta E. Buhlmann, the Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserlautern opened a major exhibition of 35 of my works. It was recently announced that this exhibition will travel to Passau in 2017, where it will be expanded to 55 prints, and then to Leverkusen.

n recent years, three publications have been produced. Vera Mercer: Particular Portraits*, published by Distanz with contributions from Matthias Harder and Uta Grosenick, presents my work in the field of portraiture from the 1960s to the present day. A project that takes me back to culinary adventures, The Boiler Room: The Restaurant and Its People, is a reflection on the art and atmosphere of the restaurant we opened in 2012. Life, also published by Distanz with essays by Britta Buhlmann and Matthias Harder, features my colour still lifes as well as new black-and-white images isolating many of the objects that frequently appear in my compositions.