Born in 1977, Papendrecht, The Netherlands. Lives and works in Berlin.

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Van der Werve was raised playing classical piano, but changed to visual arts later in life. He studied Audio Visual Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in 2006 & 2007.

He was also part of the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York, 2008, and resident at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, in 2011. Van der Werve initially started out as a performance artist, but unwilling to perform live and more than once, he began to document his performances.

Developing this practice, he quickly got interested in film and cinematography, where he found a similar emotional directness as in music, which he was missing in visual arts. The key element of his works is still performance, but he added music, text, sport and atmospheric scenes as returning elements. His works are characterized by long meditative shots and a refusal to work with actors.

Since 2007 he composes his own music. Up to this point, Guido van der Werve has created fifteen elaborate works, which have been exhibited and screened widely, finding recognition in both the art and film world. He has received many awards including the Volkskrant Beeldende kunst prijs in 2007, a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Art in 2008, the Prix International d’Art Contemporain of the Foundation Prince Pierre de Monaco in 2010, the Charlotte Koehler Prijs from the Prins Bernhard Cultuur Fonds in 2012 and the Grand Prix (Gouden Kalf) for best short film at the Netherlands Film Festival in 2013. Van der Werve’s works have been exhibited extensively in venues like the Kunsthalle Basel, MoMA/PS1, the Venice Biennial, Performa, the Moscow Biennial, the Istanbul Biennial and Manifesta.

His works have been reviewed extensively by Magazines like Art Forum, Flash Art and Frieze and papers like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, die Welt, le Figaro and the New Yorker. His works have been acquired by international leading museum and institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Goetz Collection in Munich, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, The Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam, The Boymans Museum in Rotterdam and the MWOODS museum in Beijing. Van der Werve is a visiting professor in a number of institutions like the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, Pratt and Parsons in New York and the UCLA in Los Angeles. In 2010, Van der Werve initiated the Running to Rachmaninoff run. This 55 km run from Manhattan to Rachmaninoff’s grave, has ever since been held annually. For the film Nummer veertien, Home, van der Werve completed a 1000 mile triathlon from Warsaw to Paris. He also has completed a large number of triathlons and marathons.

Van der Werve’s musical compositions have been performed live in many occasions including by the Matangi Quartet at the Stedelijk Museum, the American Symphony Orchestra at MoMA/PS1, the St. Louis Philharmonic at the World Chess Hall of Fame and the Orchestra of Europe at the Clara Kirche for the Parcours section of Art Basel.