Olaf Neumann and Swarm Art

Olaf Neumann (born 1965 in Essen, Germany) is a German artist who combines hyperrealistic painting, comics, and video in participatory Swarm Art projects. After an early start in communication design and media art, he developed his distinctive style in the 2000s – a fusion of hyperrealism and comic aesthetics.

Among his early works are portraits of international figures such as Kate Moss, Karl Lagerfeld, and Gottfried Helnwein. With his BILD Project 111 (2007), he created a series of 312 interpretative artworks based on German tabloid headlines, each completed in just 111 minutes – a conceptual forerunner of his current Swarm Art practice.

Since 2010, Neumann has realized large-scale projects under the term Swarm Art, in which the public actively contributes to the creation of the artwork. These co-creative works were developed in collaboration with institutions such as the Art Museum Mülheim an der Ruhr, the Museum of Modern Art Munich, and the Kunsthalle Bremen. The projects reference both art historical themes and contemporary societal issues.

His works are part of both renowned public and private collections. In parallel, Neumann created the cartoon series Dogtari under the same pseudonym, exploring the relationship between humans and dogs. The Dogtari cartoons are published daily online and have appeared in multiple books. The cartoon character “Scully” has become a recurring figure in his Swarm Art projects, anchoring his work firmly in pop culture.

Neumann’s art merges collective processes with personal iconography – his work is political, poetic, and transmedial. Since 2025, Olaf Neumann lives and works on Gozo (Malta), where he is developing his latest cycle, First Cut – Me2.

Swarm art is an art project developed by the artist Olaf Neumann, in which a large number of people are portrayed with a personal object and subsequently combined into a collective artwork, a "swarm image."

Source: Wikipedia: "Known worldwide as CrowdArt, the term swarm art is attributed to the German artist and blogger Olaf Neumann, who in 2010 called on people in his blog to send him portrait photos, based on which he created a drawing each day and posted it on his blog." "Through the inspiration of many people, the depiction of the individual ultimately resulted in the image of a huge swarm."

„BILD Projekt 111“

For one year, Olaf Neumann created a daily drawing interpreting the BILD newspaper’s top headline – each completed in exactly 111 minutes. The basis of each work was a nitro frottage of the newspaper’s masthead. Neumann published the drawings in real time on a blog, where reader comments actively influenced his artistic decisions. This project combined media critique with performative discipline and is considered a conceptual precursor to his later Swarm Art projects.

"Swarm Faces" (2010)

How can visual art be meaningfully connected to the internet? In early 2010, Olaf Neumann, an artist and blogger based in Ibiza, launched his first participatory art initiative titled “Swarm Art”. His goal was to create new artworks fueled by the creative input of many – his “swarm” – inviting inspiration, themes, and collaborative energy from people he only knew online.

To initiate the project, Neumann called on his audience to join in: he began drawing one portrait per day of a participant and published each portrait on his blog – a visible reflection of this emerging creative community. His vision was to generate art that arose from dialogue rather than solitude, with the internet acting not merely as a stage, but as a collaborative space.

The concept was rooted in his earlier project “BILD 111” (2007), in which Neumann created a daily drawing in 111 minutes based on Germany’s most sensational tabloid headlines. This project established a method of combining current events, artistic reflection, and audience interaction, laying the groundwork for Swarm Art.

What began with daily portraits quickly evolved into an open-ended artistic collaboration – a collective experiment at the crossroads of comic culture, digital dialogue, and contemporary art.

„Just One Thing“

As part of the c.a.r. media art fair at the Zollverein UNESCO World Heritage Site, Olaf Neumann initiated a new swarm art project. Each participant of the "swarm" was photographed by Neumann holding an object of personal significance. Based on these photos, Olaf Neumann created hyperrealistic pastel portraits.

The goal was to transform the individual creativity of each swarm member into a multitude of individual artworks, which were then condensed into a single large-scale swarm art piece. The theme of the 150 x 300 cm digital painting emerged from conversations with the project participants.

The artist’s self-portrait, composed of thousands of photos and drawings, was first exhibited in November 2013 at the c.a.r. art fair. Integrated mirror surfaces within the swarm artwork turned exhibition visitors themselves into temporary contributors—into swarm art in real time.

People & Art

Olaf Neumann’s participatory art project “People & Art” was realized in 2014 in collaboration with the Kunstmuseum Mülheim an der Ruhr. Visitors were invited to be photographed with a bust of the illustrated Great Dane Scully—the central figure of Neumann’s cartoon series DOGTARI—in front of their personal favorite artwork in the museum.

Based on these photographs, Neumann created hyperrealistic pastel portraits of the participants over the course of several months. The drawings and photos were then assembled into a large-scale mosaic artwork that, in its overall structure, depicts the façade of the museum building.

The work was first exhibited publicly in February 2015. It merges personal encounters with public space, memory with drawing, humor with seriousness—exemplifying Neumann’s artistic principle of Swarm Art: collective, polyphonic, and accessible.

IN DOG WE TRUST (2020–2024)

During the Covid lockdown in Germany, Olaf Neumann initiated the swarm art project “In Dog We Trust.” At a time when personal contact was reduced to digital communication, he noted a surge in dog adoptions from animal shelters. This social phenomenon inspired a central question:

What role does the dog play as an “emotional compass in a digital world”?

Between 2020 and 2024, Neumann created a wide range of artworks – including paintings, digital compositions, large-scale objects, and conceptual art films. One of the highlights was a series of art videos produced in collaboration with Hans-Peter Porzner from the fictional Museum of Modern Art Munich.

Another notable collaboration occurred with the Kunsthalle Bremen, in the context of the project “Albrecht Dürer and AI”, where Neumann’s Great Dane, “Scully,” symbolically took on the role of the “executing artist.”

The unexpected passing of Scully in 2024 marked a poignant turning point. It led to a highly participatory swarm art event: In a satellite exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Munich’s outpost at Rheincenter Cologne, hundreds of dog owners were photographed with their pets. These images became the basis for new swarm art pieces – including a 2.4-meter-tall sculpture depicting Spiderman searching for Scully.

Further exhibitions are planned for 2025, where the project’s results will be presented to the public on a larger scale.

Press

www.waz.de/staedte/muelheim/article10264897/der-kuenstler-als-chronist-seiner-zeit.html

www.waz.de/staedte/muelheim/article10265597/teil-eines-grossen-ganzen.html

www.waz.de/lokales/muelheim/article402052389/besucher-werden-zu-teilen-eines-kunstwerks.html

www.waz.de/kultur/article10336393/kunst-der-masse-im-museum-alte-post-in-muelheim.html

"One of the most well-known German-speaking participatory artists on the internet is Olaf Neumann." (Focus, Die Welt, Stern, N24, Sat1 News, Die Zeit, 2012)

"Olaf Neumann is an artist ... who became known for his celebrity portraits. Among others, he immortalized actors such as Dietmar Schönherr, Sir Peter Ustinov, Romy Schneider, and fellow artists like Gottfried Helnwein and Andy Warhol." (Ibiza Style, 2007)

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