Hubert Sowa’s artistic work is rooted in the New Realism of the 1970s. Over many years, he has extended this practice into the realm of conceptual artistic research, with a particular focus on drawing, performance, and photography. Since 2020, his drawing and painting have embraced a symbolically oriented realism, centered primarily on themes of plants and landscapes.
For decades, as an educator in both schools and universities, Hubert Sowa has championed an approach to art pedagogy firmly grounded in artistic, philosophical, and scientific inquiry. His work is informed by fields such as anthropology, the enactivist theory of embodiment—as it relates to images and culture—phenomenological hermeneutics, the philosophy of art, and historical art theory (drawing on thinkers and figures including Polykleitos, Aristotle, Quintilian, Dürer, Ruskin, and Hegel). Building upon these theoretical foundations, Sowa has developed an empirically grounded didactics of art and has initiated extensive further research in the field. He is a co-founder of the art-pedagogical research network IMAGO. The name "IMAGO" underscores the central importance of the image—the *imago*—in the development of capacities for perception, imagination, representation, and communication within art education.
Hubert Sowa’s artistic work is rooted in the New Realism of the 1970s. Over many years, he has extended this practice into the realm of conceptual artistic research, with a particular focus on drawing, performance, and photography.
Biography
Hubert Sowa’s artistic work is rooted in the New Realism of the 1970s. Over many years, he has extended this practice into the realm of conceptual artistic research, with a particular focus on drawing, performance, and photography. Since 2020, his drawing and painting have embraced a symbolically oriented realism, centered primarily on themes of plants and landscapes.
For decades, as an educator in both schools and universities, Hubert Sowa has championed an approach to art pedagogy firmly grounded in artistic, philosophical, and scientific inquiry. His work is informed by fields such as anthropology, the enactivist theory of embodiment—as it relates to images and culture—phenomenological hermeneutics, the philosophy of art, and historical art theory (drawing on thinkers and figures including Polykleitos, Aristotle, Quintilian, Dürer, Ruskin, and Hegel). Building upon these theoretical foundations, Sowa has developed an empirically grounded didactics of art and has initiated extensive further research in the field. He is a co-founder of the art-pedagogical research network IMAGO. The name "IMAGO" underscores the central importance of the image—the *imago*—in the development of capacities for perception, imagination, representation, and communication within art education.