Page 39 - Studio International - October 1966

Germany : the new generation

Right
R. A. Scholl
Metal relief in girl's school
Cologne-Deutz
9ft. high x 9 ft. long
Far right
Irmin Kamp
Sculpture 1966
Wood and fibreglass

Right
ManfredWotke
Pen drawing 1964
Galerie Falazik, Bochum
Centre
H. J. Breuste
Fireship 1965
Wood and metal
59 x 51i- in.
Far right
Joachim Bandau
Object 1966
Wood, painted
15- in. high

polished planes with spirals, curves, and loops in the romantic towards the classic-mathematical. Hans-
brittle material often give one a visceral sensation. In Jürgen Breuste of Hanover, a year younger, is Marianne
addition, coloured reflections create a tension between Aue's complementary opposite. His reliefs are also of
illusionistic and 'real' space. wood, but he uses old planks, ship's blocks or rough
Bandau is 30, a painter who is making objects. His forms wooden frames, complete with rope, rusty plates, ring-
lie between the organic and technological. Sometimes his screws, and fragments of tile or glass. Yet he has no
colour makes them 'readable', sometimes it states con- connexion with the school of Rauschenberg on the one
tradictions optically. His is a fertile invention, expressed hand or with that of Waagemaker on the other. His reliefs
in very simple forms. have a certain formal naivety, an almost rural warmth
At 24, Michael Bette of Düsseldorf looks like adding and strength and honesty. Irmin Kamp of Bremen is 26.
one more name to the list of infant prodigies. His series She began as a painter and has only moved on from
of blue Bogen (Bow, curve, arch) was shown at KÜPPERS' relief to sculpture in the last twelve months. Her picture-
GALLERY in Cologne last year. Their sense of fluctuating reliefs were sensational, the forms luxuriant, often rather
space, the majesty of their intensely simple form, the kind visceral. A process of organic simplification followed.
of magic quality which they possess, were all astonishing. This forced her to face the alternative : back to the plane
His present hard-edge work in black-and-white is more or onward to the third dimension. She chose to break
conventional. But it avoids the danger of a certain mysti- away—and already she looks like being the strongest
cism without losing its magic-spatial quality. talent among those under thirty. She is not far from the
I have discussed the work of Marianne Aue (b. 1934), in predominant line of recent British work, and it will be
a previous number of Studio International ( January 1965). interesting to see what the St Martin's School of Art,
Her subsequent development has been towards a greater London, whither she is bound, can do for her.
variety of colour. Her reliefs have always functioned
more as controlled vibrations of light than simply in I also discussed in a previous issue what I called the
terms of the five rods with which she creates them. This tendency to ornament, in a sense somewhere between
has made them visually fragile. In poor or diffused Hundertwasser and Quixart. This has formed in Ger-
lighting they would die. Now with optical colour they many, as nowhere else save perhaps in Spain, a kind of
have what Henri Laurens might call their 'fixed light'. third alternative. It is not abstract, but it does not refer
Simultaneously, the compositions move from the lyrical- to any object other than itself. The painting is trans-
189