Ulrich Erben was born at Düsseldorf on 26 March, 1940. With some interruptions Erben has been living in Italy since 1956. Between 1958 and 1965 he studied painting, graphic techniques, fresco painting and drawing at art academies in Hamburg, Urbino, Venice, Munich and Berlin. His first solo show "bianco + bianco" was mounted at Galleria Obelisco in Rome in 1966. Erben returned to Germany the same year. On a stay in the USA he attained Concrete Painting. The first white monochrome pictures came into existence in 1968. In 1971 the Bochum "Galerie m" showed his works in a solo show. It was in those days that Erben was occupied with the development of a light object for the exhibition “Szene Rhein-Ruhr 72“. Two years later he was awarded the “Förderpreis für Bildende Kunst“ from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Over the following years he was repeatedly occupied with collages of distorted color fields and murals. Erben was represented at Documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977. Between 1980 and 2015 he held a post as professor at the Münster department of the Düsseldorf art academy (today Münster Art Academy). In 1986 he was awarded the Konrad-Soest-Prize. A few years later Erben had to give up painting in oil for health reasons and became increasingly occupied with other techniques, such as lacquer- and acrylic paints and pigments.
Ulrich Erben has been a member of the “Sektion Bildende Kunst“ at the Berlin Art Academy since 1992. In context of an exhibition at the Museum Wiesbaden he was awarded the Otto-Ritschl-Prize in 2003. Erben looks back on a number of very successful solo shows, among them at Annely Juda Fine Art in London, several exhibitions in Osaka, in Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam and Verona. Additionally, his works were shown in several other renowned exhibitions, among them at Villa Borghese in Rome in 2006, at the Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal, but also in acclaimed museums and galleries in San Francisco, Montreal, Tokyo, Teheran, Milan and Budapest. Ulrich Erben lives and works in Düsseldorf and in Bagnoregio in Italy.