Via Lewandowsky grew up in Dresden, where he studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste from 1982 to 1987. Shortly before the Berlin Wall was torn down he moved to West Berlin and, in 1991, he received a scholarship from the Berlin Senate to work at PS1 in New York. His work for documenta IX (Kassel, 1992) had already begun to examine the theme of remembrance and memory, which he revisited ten years later in Roter Teppich (Red Carpet), a hand-tufted rug in the Federal Ministry of Defense replicating an aerial image of a bombed-out Berlin.

Although he does not consider himself a politicized artist, remembrance and memory inform his recent works, such as Hors Sol (2002, Expo 2, Murten, Swizterland) and Nouvelle DestiNation (2002, Expo 2, Biel, Swizterland), which explore issues related to migration, and his current project for the for the Jewish Museum in Munich.

In 2005 he was awarded the Critic’s Prize for Visual Art.

His work is included in the exhibition Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 25 January to 19 April, 2009