The Artist
Ralf List
Artist · Entrepreneur · Golfer
Ralf List, born in Aachen in 1963, opened his first gallery at the age of 23. He spent the next few decades as an entrepreneur—including the successful establishment and sale of his own cosmetics company—before turning his attention fully back to art.
Under the name BrandArt by List, he founded an internationally acclaimed art movement that detaches luxury objects from their original brand function and gives them a new, independent meaning.
Ralf List doesn’t paint pictures of golf. He paints what golf does to us.
He looks into the minds of golfers—right into those moments everyone knows: the first tee shot, when suddenly everyone is watching. The thought before the water hazard: just don’t hit it in there. The slice that drives you to despair. The bunker you just want to get out of. And that darn two-meter putt that suddenly makes your hands shake.
MIND OF GOLF brings the golfer’s psyche to life. Anyone who plays golf doesn’t just see golf in these images. They recognize themselves.
IN THE STUDIO
Ralf List doesn’t just paint on canvas. He breaks through it. At the center of each work is a golf ball he made himself—40 cm in diameter, weighing 1.4 kg, produced on a 3D printer—that protrudes impressively from the canvas. This transforms a painting into more than just an image: painting becomes sculpture, and a flat surface gains depth. It’s a process that takes weeks before a work reaches its final dimensions of 150 × 150 cm.