Eva Renée Nele

Eva Renée Nele was born in Berlin, Germany, on 17 March 1932, and grew up in Kassel. She was the daughter of Arnold Bode, the founder of the first documenta exhibition in Kassel.

In 1951, she moved to London to study at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, where she came into contact with contemporary artists and designers. She then continued her training at Studio Lacourière in Paris, where she learned the copper intaglio process, and later studied under Hans Uhlmann at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Berlin. During those years, she also spent much time in workshops learning to work with steel and iron. Since women were not allowed to work in metal workshops at the time, she also attended a goldsmith class.

Eva Renée Nele became known as a highly versatile sculptor, metal artist, goldsmith, printmaker and designer. Her work includes large-scale sculptures, jewellery, graphics, installations and objects for interiors. The human figure remained a central theme throughout much of her oeuvre, often translated into metal with a strong emotional and psychological charge.

She was already involved in the early years of documenta through her father, and her own sculptural works were shown at documenta II in 1959 and documenta III in 1964. She later developed into an established artist with works shown in both museums and public space.

After completing her studies, she first lived in Munich, then in Zurich, and later settled in Frankfurt am Main, where she became an important part of the local cultural scene. She also taught metal sculpture in Frankfurt, Gießen and Salzburg.

Her work is represented in major collections, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. It has also been associated with institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt and the Neue Pinakothek in Munich.

In 2008, Eva Renée Nele was awarded the Goethe Plaque by the city of Frankfurt. She is also a recipient of the Hessian Cultural Prize.

A catalogue on her work, Yesterday & Tomorrow, was published in 2013.

According to information shared by the designer herself, Eva Renée Nele worked for Temde for around 20 years from the 1960s onwards. For the company’s Swiss branch in Sevelen, she developed a large number of modern lighting designs. She designed, among others, the Agita, Mandarin, Prisma, Neunauge and No-Lamp.

Her contribution to design extended beyond lighting alone. She also designed tables, jewellery, cutlery and interior-related objects, always with a sculptural sensitivity that connects her design work to her broader artistic practice.

The exhibition E. R. Nele. Contemporary Witness at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, held in 2022–2023 on the occasion of her 90th birthday, underlined once again how broad and important her work has been, both as an artist and as a designer.