(b Oelde, Westphalia, 26 March 1937). German sculptor, painter and draughtsman. He served an apprenticeship in Oelde as a sculptor in wood (1951–7) and subsequently studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Berlin (1957–61), where the formal approach of his teacher Karl Hartung was evident in his work. His activities in drawing and sculpture began with a four-month stay in Naples, where he researched 16th-century Mannerism, and studied the drawings of Georg Baselitz. In 1970 Höckelmann settled in Cologne and until 1979 earned a living as a post-office worker, while continuing to make art. He saw drawing as ‘more sculptural than sculpture’, and his paintings evoke wildly proliferating organic structures, reminiscent of whirlwinds or magnetic fields in dialogue with the picture plane, as in Untitled (1979; Bonn, Städt. Kstmus.). Echoes of female forms in his work took on a more unambiguous iconographic status in the 1970s and 1980s. He also dealt repeatedly with biblical themes, as in Judith and Holofernes IV (1981; Wuppertal, von der Heydt-Mus.). His sculptures are assembled from such diverse materials as polystyrene, aluminium foil, cardboard and gauze crumpled and painted to give an impression of structure (e.g. Face with Bow, 1984; Mannheim, Stadt. Ksthalle). In the 1980s he added painted wood and bronze casts to the materials employed. He was also known for his masks.