Marc Henri Reckinger was born in Ettelbrück and spent his childhood in Redingen/Attert. Before moving to the south of Luxembourg (Esch-sur-Alzette and Dudelange), he lived in Diekirch for four years. His father, Jean Reckinger, originated from Diekirch and was a clerk at the court of the justice of the peace. During the Second World War, Marc Henri Reckinger’s parents were forced to resettle in Germany, leaving their son with his aunt in Arlon. After the war, he visited his mother at the convalescent home Château de Colpach where he discovered his passion for art through the collection of Aline and Émile Mayrisch. From 1961 to 1962, he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels and between 1962 and 1963, he was enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. From 1963 to 1964, he continued his training at the École Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1968, he was appointed as a teacher of art, a profession he practised for 36 years. From 1970, he was involved in politics for 7 years.

Reckinger met his future wife while he was doing his military service. During their honeymoon in London, he discovered the contemporary art scene (including Pop Art). Later on, he studied cubist artists at the Kunstmuseum in Basel. The couple adopted a son from Brazil, Marco Aurelio (1987-2021).

Throughout his life, Reckinger has been interested in a wide range of fields, not only the visual arts, but also theatre, literature, music, philosophy and politics. This transdisciplinarity reflects in most of his works. His interest in art history and the literature he studied inspired him to cite famous twentieth-century artists such as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Georges Braque (1882-1963) and Honoré Daumier (1808-1879). Reckinger's art, however, is above all socially engaged. The artist's themes reflect his critical approach to contemporary society. His pictorial universe often focused on the real world and topical issues (labour, developing countries, social injustice, ecological subjects, etc.).

His style evolved from non-figuration to figuration. After a period of Expressionism, Abstraction, Pop Art, Conceptual art and Land art, he returned to figuration, or "Critical Realism", as the artist himself called it. This was followed by an extended Cubist period, which led once again to a more realistic and engaged phase. Reckinger used various visual art techniques: oil and acrylic painting, drawing, assemblage, collage, sculpture and engraving. His "construction paintings" (term used by the artist) are combinations of oil painting and collage in two or three dimensions.

The artist attributes his evolution towards conceptual art to a pivotal moment when he attended the exhibition Vorstellungen nehmen Form an at the Haus Lange Museum in Krefeld, Germany, in 1969. This experience not only inspired him but also directly influenced the creation of his collective artwork "Ligne Brisée." He painted this line on 8 June 1969 in a natural setting in the Petruss Valley in Luxembourg City, together with the artists’ collective Arbeitsgruppe Kunst. Many of the members became later political activists. The work Ligne Brisée has been attributed to the Land Art movement.

Between 1970 and 1976/1977, Reckinger withdrew from the artistic world. When he returned to the art scene, he pursued an artistic direction which he called "Critical Realism" until 1980. From 1981 onwards, he studied the publications of art historian John Berger (1926-2017) about Cubism to further develop his artistic practice. In this manner, he endeavored to more effectively articulate his aspiration for a transformed society, "his utopia of a better world", as the artist described it (e.g. Femme indienne au marché en Guatemala,1983). He gradually turned to creating expansive Post-Cubist works (e.g. Installation, 1991), that were inspired, according to the artist, by a series of three-dimensional works painted by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in 1913. In terms of form, he used real objects to express in his works "a tension between real space and intended space and real object and intended object" (Reckinger quoted in Lory 19). In the 1980s, he justified his commitment and his artistic theories in a series of nine texts entitled Prises de positions. Inspired by a new aesthetic, his pictorial research then led him to create mobiles in polyester with an effect of transparency and lightness, before returning to more realistic, critical and committed paintings on canvas, such as La mort et ses masques from 2020.

Reckinger took part in numerous solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. His first solo exhibition was organised in 1963 at the Galerie Municipale in Esch-sur-Alzette, while he was still a student. His exhibition at the Cité Universitaire in Paris followed a year later. Reckinger was one of the three initiators of the three avant-garde exhibitions held at the Consdorfer Scheier between 1967 and 1969. In 1968, he engaged in Luxembourg's pioneering institutional art happening entitled We call it Arden and we live in it as a member of the collective Arbeitsgruppe Kunst. The happening was hosted at the Salon du Cercle Artistique.. In 1969, further happenings were organised as part of the international exhibition Initiative 69. Première exposition non affirmative et coopérative d'art actuel 69 in Luxembourg City. After his creative retreat, he staged a solo exhibition at the Galerie Dominique Lang in 1978. Abroad, he presented solo exhibitions at the Centre Culturel in Libourne, France (1985), at the Galerie Im Fürstenhaus in Hall, Tirol, Austria (1986), at the Galerie Alliages in Brussels (1987), at the Galerie Europa in Brussels (1990), at the Palais Rihour in Lille (1991) and at the Galerie Inter Art in Stuttgart (1994). International group exhibitions include shows in Filderstadt (1986), Hong Kong (1988) and Saarbrücken (2023), amongst others.

At secondary school, Luxembourg artist Foni Tissen was Reckinger’s art teacher. Upon the recommendation of Auguste Trémont, he gained his parents' approval to pursue art studies, with the provision that he successfully attain a drawing teacher's diploma.. In Vienna and Paris, Reckinger studied under his friend, the artist Georges Calteux. In Paris, became friends with Jacques Clauzel (1941-) and took classes with Roger Chastel (1897-1981), who enabled him to exhibit abroad for the first time. During the time of the Consdorfer Scheier (1967 to 1971), he was a member of a group of artists and writers that included Jeannot Bewing, Norbert Ketter, Anise Koltz, Roger Manderscheid, Cornel Meder, Roger Schiltz, Lambert Schlechter and Nico Thurm. In 1968, Reckinger worked with Carlo Dickes, Roger Kieffer, Berthe Lutgen, René Wiroth, Pierre Ziesaire, Misch Da Leiden, Joseph Weydert and Robert Collignon. Together with the Arbeitsgruppe Kunst (D.L. Carlo, Roger Kieffer, Berthe Lutgen, René Wiroth, Pierre Ziesaire), he initiated several happenings.

His works can be found in public and private collections, particularly in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, France and Germany. Some of those collections include: the Musée national d'archéologie, d'histoire et d'art (MNAHA), Poste P&T, Ville de Dudelange, Ville d'Esch-sur-Alzette and the Collection de la BCEE (Caisse d'Epargne et de l'Etat). Furthermore, the artist has installed several works in public spaces, including the Lycée Nic Biever in Dudelange (1985), the Edward Steichen Centre in Bivange (1992) and the Town Hall of Dudelange.

Reckinger was a member of several associations. In 1967, he co-founded the artists' and writers' group Consdorfer Scheier together with Nico Thurm and Norbert Ketter and between 1968 and 1970, he was a member of the Arbeitsgruppe Kunst. In the 1970s, he was a member of the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire. In 1979, he co-founded the Lëtzebuerger Konschtgewerkschaft (LKG). In cooperation with Europa-Haus Wien, Reckinger was also active as a member of AGORA, an association of European students.

Reckinger received the first prize and the critics' prize at the Biennale des jeunes in Esch-sur-Alzette in 1964. The same year, he won the Biarritz Painting Prize in Paris. In 2002, he was awarded the Prix culturel de la Ville de Dudelange.

From the beginning of his artistic career, Reckinger attracted the interest of critics. His abstract works were noticed already at his first exhibition in 1961 as an article published by critic Walentiny exemplifies (Walentiny, unknown page). While in 1964 he was still described as a promising artist, in 1967 the "extraordinary flowering of his talent" was noted (Raus, unknown page). Of the three avant-garde exhibitions held at the Consdorfer Scheier, Reckinger was remembered above all for his "talent as a colourist, his sense of construction and the confident handling of his craft" as well as for being someone who could afford to create "Pop Art without ridiculousness" (Raus, 'Blow up', unknown page). In 1978, several critics stressed that, after his artistic break, Reckinger had found his own style in figurative, engaged painting. His paintings now became a means of political communication aiming to stir up society (Cothé, unknown page) in a "socialist Realism" (Aodry, unknown page). In 1981, the term "dialectical materialism in painting" was used to describe his work ("Marc Reckinger's Suche nach dem dialektischen Materialismus in der Malerei", page unknown). In 1983, the art critic Lucien Kayser acknowledged the artist's talent in his Cubist phase, but wondered whether "Reckinger's Cubism is suitable for expressing our utopia" and whether it was merely an interlude before returning to Realism (Kayser, page unknown). In 1988, the art critic Joseph Paul Schneider emphasised both "the technical talent and the obstinacy of this solitary artist, who embodies a rebith of Cubism" (Schneider, page unknown). On the occasion of the inauguration of a monumental work by Reckinger at the Nic Biever technical college in 1985, the press repeated the statement already made at the time about the need to integrate contemporary art into the public space in order to force everybody to take a stand on various social issues and to support contemporary artists through public commissions. Derived from the commonly known German directive "Kunst am Bau," a corresponding law was introduced in Luxembourg in 2015, translating the concept into action by mandating that 1% of the construction budget be allocated to incorporating art within public buildings("Über die Öffentlichkeit von Bildern: Marc Reckingers heile Schulwelt", page unknown)  In 1988, the artist, labeled a "maverick" within the Luxembourg art sector and frequently pushed to the margins due to his unreservedly critical standpoints regarding the political and societal atmosphere, reflected on the development of his career in an interview (Reckinger quoted in Lory 19). In 1994, the later director of the Mudam, Enrico Lunghi, criticised Reckinger's Cubist style as an expression of "a typically 'local', i.e. essentially decorative style (without any real artistic potential and without reflecting on the means employed)" (Lunghi, page unknown). Twenty years later, in 2013, the art historian Nathalie Becker, nevertheless, concluded Reckinger "is undoubtedly one of the great contemporary Luxembourg artists and also a man of convictions (...) Activism social, political and humanitarian commitment are the cornerstones of his art and his existence" (78).

From an art-historical perspective, Reckinger can be considered a Post-Cubist, as for him, Cubism is neither an analytical nor a synthetic research, but rather the manifestation of an innovative personal research in treating the surface of the sculpture ("construction-paintings"). By using simple everyday objects, his works are constructions rather than deconstructions, assemblages that represent a part of the world in motion (based on an accumulation of experiences). They allow for a multiplication of points of view in order to "revive the ability to dream", as the artist stated.

Works cited

R., Audry, "Expo coll. La Rotonde Limpertsberg." Tageblatt 03.04.1980: unknown. Print.

Becker, Nathalie. "La Collection Luxembourgeoise du Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art : Marc-Henri Reckinger, un peintre engagé et militant." Ons stad 104 (2013): 78-79. Print. 

Cothé. "Marc Reckinger in der Galerie Dominique Lang". Tageblatt 30.01.1978: unknown. Print.

Lory, Michel. "Marc-Henri Reckinger répond à Michel Lory." CM Kulturmagazin für Esch/Alzette+Luxembourg 4 (1988): 19. Print.

Lunghi, Enrico. "14 ans de cubisme : Marc Henri Reckinger à l’abbaye d’Echternach." Luxemburger Wort 06.06.1994: unknown. Print.

Kayser, Lucien. "Secundo, voici Marc Henri Reckinger." D’Lëtzebuerger Land 04.03.1983: unknown. Print.

"Marc Reckingers Suche nach dem dialektischen Materialismus in der Malerei." N.p. 28.04.1981: unknown. Print.

"Marc-Henri Reckinger expose à Libourne." Républicain Lorrain 23.05.1985 : unknown. Print.

Raus, Jean-Paul. "A la Galerie ‘Interart’ : Marc Reckinger’". D’Lëtzebuerger Land 20.01.1967: page unknown. Print.

Raus, Jean-Paul. " ‘Blow up’ à Consdorf’". D’Lëtzebuerger Land 07.07.1967: page unknown. Print.

"Über die Öffentlichkeit von Bildern: Marc Reckingers heile Schulwelt." Tageblatt 19.06.1985 : unknown. Print.

Schneider, Joseph Paul. "Centre Culturel Français : le cubisme revu : Marc-Henri Reckinger." Luxemburger Wort 15.12.1988: unknown. Print.

Walentiny, Jos. "Kunstgalerie Esch-Alzette Zur ‚Première biennale de la peinture et de la sculpture des jeunes‘." Luxemburger Wort 28.10.1961: unknown. Print.