This book is only available in German. If you would like more detailed information, please consult our German website. You can also contact Hatje Cantz directly.

Presenting for the first time complementary holdings from the internationally renowned drawing collections of the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, and the Kupferstichkabinett, Basel, this volume is a singular overview of drawings from the beginning of the German Renaissance to the mid-sixteenth century. In this period of transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern age, craftsmen and artists emerged from the traditional anonymity of their trade. They began consciously to reflect on their role in society, and took a more humanist view of nature in their work. They chose to depict dramatic events rather than biblical allegories and saints, using detailed perspective and natural scenery. In addition to drawings by three of the most accomplished artists of this era - Albrecht D³rer, Hans Holbein the Younger, and Matthias Gr³newald, this book includes three who worked in D³rer's workshop - Hans Baldung, Hans von Kulmbach, and Hans Schõufelein; the Swiss artists Urs Graf and Niklaus Manuel; and the master of the Danube school, Albrecht Altdorfer, Erhard Altdorfer, and Wolf Huber. This exceptional survey presents twenty-five artists altogether, each represented by descriptive analysis and color reproductions of their work. (English edition available ISBN 3-7757-0848-0)

Transforming color into light is one of the great themes of painting. Dan Flavin (1933–1996) used light as color and material. Employing ordinary neon light tubes, he developed a radical new form of art that freed the “picture” from its frame and turned it into a luminous, space-consuming color object. Expanding the wall painting by turning it into a light installation corresponded with the liberation of light from its traditionally spiritual meaning. Flavin’s works recall neon signs from urban nightlife or commonplace living-room lamps. Viewers find themselves immersed in a splendid play of light and color that allows the physical experience of unrestrained art. This publication elucidates the development of Flavin’s oeuvre—from the visual objects, the so-called Icons, to the spatial installations with neon tubes—and explains their genesis based on drawings and prints, an independent group of works that testifies to the artist’s visual sensitivity. (English edition ISBN 978-3-7757-3523-0)

 

Exhibition schedule: mumok. museum moderner kunst stiftung ludwig, Vienna, October 13, 2012–February 3, 2013 | Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, February–June 2013

 

Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca (*1961 in Buenos Aires) is one of the most important contemporary artists in South America. Architecture, theater, music, and cartography play a central role in his work; maps and blueprints are condensed into a world of poetic and territorial fantasies, where reality and fiction overlap. Kuitca measures the world anew, shedding light on complex spatial contexts and intertwined social processes.
Many of Kuitca’s works are in the Daros Latinamerica Collection. Centered on the items in the collection, this publication opens up an exciting dialogue: an interview with the artist conducted by Hans-Michael Herzog, as well as numerous color plates, provide a representative view into Kuitca’s multilayered paintings and drawings.

 

Exhibition schedule: Daros Exhibitions, Zurich, November 25, 2006–March 18, 2007

One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Gerhard Richter will exhibit a series of commissioned works at the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin in October 2002 which grow out of works Richter first presented in Mönchengladbach in the early seventies. In his experiments with the mirror and its relationship to painting, Richter often adds a layer of color behind the glass surfaces, thus complicating and compromising the clarity and "truth" expected from the glass. The shifting, hazy reflections articulate the elusive nature of the reality artists struggle to imitate. For Richter, there is no one vision, no certitude. Representing nothingness - the void - the eight large grey mirrors recall for the artist a kind of "memento mori." The publication will focus on the commission project and the importance of the Mirror series, projects in glass, grey monochromes, and related works in Richter's career. The catalog will include an essay by Richter expert Benjamin Buchloh as well as a focused bibliography. Nearly fifty images of drawings and related works dating from 1965 to the present as well as studies for the Berlin installation will be illustrated. The existing scholarship on the artist does not include a book dedicated to the understanding and analysis of this significant aspect of the artist's oeuvre, thus this catalog will be an important contribution to Richter studies. (German edition available ISBN 3- 7757-1274-7) Exhibition Schedule: Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin October 11, 2002 - January 5, 2003

The sculptor Damián Ortega (born 1967 in Mexico City) has compiled a selection of drawings for this publication, with which he conceived sculptures and their spatial installations. He groups these drawings and designs under the title *Supervivencia de la Idea*, or "Survival of the Idea." This makes it clear that Damián Ortega attributes great, if not even greater, importance to the medium of drawing – in this particular case, to the designs for monumental productions – than to the finished works. With these drawings, the projects are published and, at the same time, the copyright for an idea is established. Ortega's selection of project drawings from 1991 to 2007 therefore not only provides a retrospective overview of the genesis and conception of past projects, but also documents an archive of ideas that will only be realized when the time is ripe for them.
 
Exhibition: Preis der Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst, Hamburger Bahnhof and daadgalerie, Berlin 14.9.–4.11.2007

This catalogue focuses on Robert Longo’s recent series of charcoal drawings of well-known Abstract Expressionist paintings. Rendered in charcoal, the original paintings are immediately recognizable, but it is the overlooked or imperceptible details of the complex surface, the tactility of the paint, the brushstrokes and the pattern of the canvas that Longo has made visible in his translation from color to black-and-white, paint to charcoal. Exploring his ambivalence toward painting, Longo's drawings address the historical magnitude of Abstract Expressionism in art historical and cultural contexts.

Smiljan Radić is famous for his architectural designs, but especially for one attention-drawing coup: in 2014, his Serpentine Pavillon, designed to look like a gigantic stone, astonished visitors. This building was in no way his first stroke of genius, however. Radić has long been a superstar in his home country of Chile, thanks to numerous small and large projects such as the regional theater Bíobío or the house he dedicated to Le Cobusier’s Poème de l’angle droit. Using minimal means, he creates extraordinary spaces. His architectural structures are like sculptures that respond to their environments. Obra Gruesa/Rough Work presents twenty-four key works produced between 1990 and 2015. Richly illustrated, with countless conceptual sketches and construction drawings, this edition contains two new essays by Moises Puente and the famous Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

SMILJAN RADIĆ (*1965, Santiago) studied at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the Istituto Universitario di Architettura de Venezia. In 1995 he began working independently with Nicolas Skutelis and Flavio Zanon. He currently lives and works in Santiago de Chile.

Chiharu Shiota (*1972 in Osaka, Japan) is one of the most sought-after artists in the world, at the latest since the presentation of her installation in the Japan Pavilion at the Biennale in Venice in 2015. Everyday objects, mementos, and objets trouvés characterize the artist’s pictorial language and stand for the subject matter in her oeuvre—recollection, homeland, migration, death, and life. The key figures in her expansive installations with wool threads are old suitcases and shoes, keys, pieces of clothing, furniture, and letters, which she enthrallingly integrates into her works and performances. In the present publication, photographs, film stills, drawings, prints, and objects from the artist’s archive comprehensively document the stations in Shiota’s oeuvre and illustrate her mostly site-specific, temporary installations. The book is published on the occasion of the first retrospective of the Berlin-based artist and concentrates on her creative work of the last twenty years.

The paintings that brought Matthias Weischer (*1973 in Elte) international recognition depict interiors, often sparsely furnished rooms, in which decorative elements and shifted perspectives create an unsettling sense of space, questioning the viewer’s power of perception. The rough nature of Weischer’s drawings have an immediate effect on the viewer, representing a second, stylistically very independent, strand of his work. Nevertheless, the genres do overlap at times; occasionally the drawings pick up on ideas that have already been realized in his paintings, or they allude to visual elements that can later be seen in the painted works.

This first catalogue of Weischer’s drawings is presented in a generous oversize publication, whose apparent lack of organization gives the volume the special feel of an artist’s sketchbook.

 

Exhibition schedule: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, November 10–December 23, 2007 Kloster Bentlage, Rheine, January 27–March 9, 2008

Rembrandt (1606–1669) is counted among the great masters of drawing of all time, and his drawings have been highly valued from the start. In terms of number and quality, the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett has one of the best collections of Rembrandt drawings in the world, whose only comparable rival is probably the collection at the British Museum in London. With the exception of the rare studies of animals, this exquisite monograph presents a full spectrum of the genres and materials involved in the drawings, from the early to the later works.

Of the 130 drawings in the Berlin collection formerly considered works done by Rembrandt alone, only 55 can be confirmed as such, according to Holm Bevers, Assistant Director of the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett and author of this publication. This knowledgeable investigation therefore focuses on the very difficult process of differentiating among the hands that created the works. It has scientifically deciphered the Berlin collection and distinguished current research from prior research. In addition, this attractive volume provides extensive answers to questions regarding the function, iconography, and the style of the drawings. (English edition ISBN 978-3-7757-1924-7)

 

Exhibition: Institut Neederlandais, Paris, January 11-March 11, 2007 · The Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam, March 22-May 27, 2007

Artist Max Weiler (1910–2001) not only left behind a multifaceted oeuvre of paintings, he also produced a great number of important drawings. Over a period of more than seventy years he created a body of work estimated to contain close to 3,500 drawings. Executed in almost all sizes and techniques, they express the artist’s individual cosmos—the entanglement of intrinsic and extrinsic nature—in a myriad of ways.

This publication provides incisive insight into Weiler’s graphic oeuvre, presenting the development and diversity of the works as well as their relationship to painting. This reciprocal exchange is marked by the transgression and blending of genre boundaries and is illustrated based on selected paintings.

 

Exhibition schedule: Albertina, Vienna, June 10–October 16, 2011

 

Presenting for the first time complementary holdings from the internationally renowned drawing collections of the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, and the Kupferstichkabinett, Basel, this volume is a singular overview of drawings from the beginning of the German Renaissance to the mid-sixteenth century. In this period of transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern age, craftsmen and artists emerged from the traditional anonymity of their trade. They began consciously to reflect on their role in society, and took a more humanist view of nature in their work. They chose to depict dramatic events rather than biblical allegories and saints, using detailed perspective and natural scenery. In addition to drawings by three of the most accomplished artists of this era - Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, and Matthias Grünewald, this book includes three who worked in Dürer's workshop - Hans Baldung, Hans von Kulmbach, and Hans Schäufelein; the Swiss artists Urs Graf and Niklaus Manuel; and the master of the Danube school, Albrecht Altdorfer, Erhard Altdorfer, and Wolf Huber. This exceptional survey presents twenty-five artists altogether, each represented by descriptive analysis and color reproductions of their work. (German edition available ISBN 3-7757-0669-0)

Olaf Breuningì Ugly Edited by Christoph Doswald, texts by Christoph Doswald, Gianni Jetzer, Markus Stegmann, Dorothea Strauss, Philippe Vergne English editionì 164 pp., 125 color illus., ì 22.4 x 30.5 cm, hardcoverì ISBN 3-7757-1105-8ì July 2001 Over the last three years the Swiss artist, Olaf Breuning (born in Schaffhausen in 1970), has become widely known through his participation in various international group exhibitions, including Missing Link (Kunstmuseum Bern/Kunst Haus Dresden), Hypermental (Kunsthaus Zürich/Kunsthalle Hamburg) and Let's Entertain (Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis/Centre Pompidou, Paris/Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg). In his photographs, videos and installations - seen here for the first time in a comprehensive overview - Olaf Breuning engages with the reality of the media that surround us day in, day out. In doing so he draws on a huge fund of images from films, television and advertising, video clips and computer games which he brings together in a hybrid mix of nonchalant elegance. For Breuning nothing is too sacred or profane to be icluded in one of his playfully subtle combinations: in his installation Ugly Yelp (2000), for instance, Breuning creates an ensemble from the accoutrements of occultism, New Age fads and vampire films - combining disgust, sweetness and kitsch, horror, levity and gravity to create a world of unforgettable images.

Between 1971 and 1972, a remarkable cross-section of New York’s downtown creative community participated in a collaborative drawing project conceived by Hisachika Takahashi (*1940 in Tokyo), an artist and studio assistant to Robert Rauschenberg. Repurposing a primary school exercise, Takahashi asked each artist to draw a map of the United States from memory. Contributions from the twenty-two participants—among them Jasper Johns, Joseph Kosuth, Brice Marden, Gordon Matta-Clark, Keith Sonnier, and Lawrence Weiner—range from sensitive renderings to visualized reminiscences and sly riffs on the process of mapping. After decades in storage, the drawings came to light in 2013. This publication reproduces the entire series and features comments from participants.

 

Artists featured (selection): Arakawa, Jed Bark, Mel Bochner, Juan Downey, Alex Hay, Jasper Johns, Joseph Kosuth, Jefrey Lew, Jane Logemann, Brice Marden, Gordon Matta-Clark, Richard Nonas, Robert Petersen, Robert Rauschenberg, Dorothea Rockburne, James Rosenquist, Keith Sonnier, Cy Twombly, Susan Weil, Lawrence Weiner, Robert Whitman, Don Wyman

In this first major publication paying tribute to the subject of landscape in the works of Vincent van Gogh, more than 50 paintings and drawings by the Dutch artist will be represented - taking van Gogh's Field with Poppies from the collection of the Kunsthalle Bremen as a starting point. This picture was one of the first van Gogh painted in 1889 in the surrounding countryside of the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he let himself be voluntarily treated. Fields are the artist's leitmotif, a motif, which runs like a thread through his work. The paintings in the volume illustrate the extent to which van Gogh's mind was rooted in the cycles of nature: from the mythical sower to the flowering corn to the autumnal reaper. Above all they show the artistic possibilities of his conception of landscape: from the perspective effect of depth to the accentuation of the canvas surface. Field with Poppies was acquired by the Bremen Kunsthalle in 1911. The purchase prompted the protest of German artists against the arrival of French Modernism in German museums. However, the Bremen curator Gustav Pauli, supported by well-known artists such as Max Liebermann and Wassily Kandinsky, defended the purchase. The argument, which aroused the whole of Germany at that time, will be clearly documented by the publication. (German edition available ISBN 3-7757-1130-9) Exhibition Schedule: Kunsthalle Bremen October 19, 2002 - January 26, 2003

The spectacular series by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto (*1948 in Tokyo) are characterized by matchless clarity and presence. His works are always an absolute embodiment of his chosen visual motif, reduced to its essence.
This exquisite monograph is the first to feature works selected from all of the series produced to date— including, of course, his most famous: Sugimoto's celebrated portraits of wax figures seem to face up to their living audiences; his Seascapes show us nothing less than a person's first conscious view of the ocean; the extremely long exposures of Theaters elevate the white, luminescent cinema screen, transforming it into a magical image of an altar; and the fascinating Dioramas—photographs of scientific display cases— allow us to travel with the artist far into the past to observe extinct animal species or the daily life of early man. Additions to the original edition are two new groups of works, Lightning Fields (2006) and Photogenic Drawings (2007).

The enormous, photorealistic charcoal drawings by American artist Robert Longo (*1953 in Brooklyn, New York) show the beauty and horror of the present day and age. His large-format works contrast the innocence of sleeping toddlers, the tranquil grandiosity of Earth and the planets, roses in bloom, and Gothic cathedrals with threatening images of atom bomb explosions, fighter pilots, monster waves, sharks, and the muzzles of revolvers. Inexorably and seismographically precise, the winner of the 2005 Goslar Kaiserring and 2010 inductee into the French Order of Arts and Letters records the state of our world. Longo’s powerful motifs give form and expression to the feelings of fear and longing felt by people in the twenty-first century, and affect the viewer with the full force of the medium.

This large-format, elaborately designed book, printed on natural paper using a tritone process, bound in half cloth and distributed in four different cover designs, has been created in close collaboration with the artist and affords a comprehensive overview of his charcoal drawings from the past decade.

 

Exhibition schedule: Kunsthalle Weishaupt, Ulm, November 28, 2010–September 25, 2011

 

The Kupferkabinett at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe is home to a spectacular ensemble of French drawings. The collection ranges from the art of the sixteenth century court to Rococo drawings and nineteenth century landscape art, all the way to turn of the century Symbolism. The Kupferstichkabinett presents 120 of its drawings by French artists. Besides the works of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Eugène Delacroix, Camille Corot, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Odilon Redon, Paul Gauguin, and others, the show and its companion catalog feature motifs and drawing techniques, creative tools, drawing mounting methods, and various types of paper, vividly conveying what exactly makes these works on paper special. It’s a real rendezvous with the French “thinkers on paper”!

Exhibition:
29.9.2018–13.1.2019, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe