Cooper Hewitt says...
Daniel Kruger was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1951 and grew up in the semi-desert landscape of Namibia. This landscape made a strong impression on him as a space where people play a subordinate role to nature.
Kruger studied goldsmithing, graphic design, painting, and sculpture in Stellenbosch and Cape Town. In 1974, he began attending the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (Academy of Fine Arts) in Munich, where he apprenticed under goldsmith Herman Jünger. Moving to Europe was also a formative experience since that region's landscape was a reversal of his hometown’s physical environment. Kruger’s experiences living in two very different landscapes contributed to his interest in exploring both the natural and the artificial in his work.
Kruger graduated from the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in 1980. He has since traveled around the world to lecture and teach workshops. He has worked in both jewelry design and ceramics, and his jewelry has been the recipient of several prizes for his jewelry, including the Herbert Hofmann Prize. Since 2003, Kruger has taught at the Burg Giebichenstein University for Art and Design in Halle, Germany as Professor of Jewelry. He lives in Berlin, working as a designer and teacher.
