Thomas Bayrle is regarded as a pioneer of German Pop Art and an early precursor of digital art. Since the 1960s he has worked with repetition and grid structures, in which countless small, identical images combine to form a larger image that Bayrle calls a Superform. Through this approach he examines mass production, consumer culture, technology and the relationship between the individual and the crowd.
Bayrle has worked across painting, printmaking, screenprinting, sculpture and, later, computer-generated imagery. He participated in documenta three times and his work has been shown at institutions including Tate Modern, Museum Ludwig and MACBA in Barcelona. As a long-standing professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, he also had a major influence on a younger generation of artists.
