Alexander Tolnay Bücher

Auf seinen ausgedehnten Reisen, vor allem in Asien, hält Günther Uecker Eindrücke und Begegnungen mit der ihn umgebenden Landschaft auf rasch erfassten Aquarellen von meisterlicher Qualität fest. Die kleinen Formate zeigen eine teils rauschhaft leuchtende Farbigkeit, aber auch an japanische Rollbilder erinnernde Tuscheformulierungen in vollendeter Nuancierung. Immer jedoch tritt Uecker in ihnen in einen engen Dialog mit dem künstlerischen Erbe und der Spiritualität der besuchten Region. Zum Künstler: Günther Uecker * 1930 in Wendorf (Mecklenburg). 1949-1953 Studium an der Fachschule für angewandte Kunst in Wismar und an der Kunstakademie Berlin-Weißensee. 1955-1958 Studium an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. 1975-1995 Professor an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Ab 1961 Mitglied der Avantgarde-Gruppe ZERO. Teilnahme documenta III., 4 und 6. 1970 deutscher Beitrag der Biennale Venedig. 1983 Kaiserring der Stadt Goslar. Mitglied im Orden Pour le Mérite. Ausstellung: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin 12.3.-6.6.2005

Berlin-based artist Via Lewandowsky, born in 1963, came to international attention at Documenta IX, and more recently with a piece commissioned by the German Ministry of Defense, an aerial view of Berlin showing the devastation of World War II. Paeninsular presents his most recent works, devoted to overturning ordinary logic with visual and conceptual play. Lewandowsky's complicated installations are often determined, down to the smallest detail, by irony and deception, examining the idiosyncrasies of the German language and its visual interpretations. For example, the German word "schrankwand" (wall unit) becomes an object in which a wall and a cupboard penetrate one another such that a door in the wall stands half-open in the cupboard. His title, Paeninsular, which uses geography figuratively, suggests a world in which one is always slightly disoriented and can never be sure how to find (literally speaking) the mainland or (conceptually speaking) the final meaning of this teasing work.

Daniel Richter is one of those German artists who, in the second half of the 1990s, set off to conquer the international art world. He succeeded in doing so, even though--or perhaps because--this was a time dominated by new media and conceptual space installations. The "end of painting" was proclaimed once more, and yet Richter remained loyal to his medium. And so he has been celebrated as the new "prince of painting," alongside fellow brush-and-canvas colleagues like Neo Rauch. Up until 2000, Daniel Richter painted abstract pictures exclusively, but his newer works show a surprising turn towards the figurative, blending a sophisticated use of color and composition with grotesque formal elements and art historic quotations. This large-format publication is the first to present Richter's drawings in full-color illustrations.