Page 59 - Studio Interantional - May 1967

Above left Edward Micus Coudrage 43
1966
oil on canvas 39⅜ x 51¼ in.
Galerie Thomas, Munich

Above Gernot Bubenik Genitals of the
Venus (scheme) 1965
oil on canvas 51+ x 63 in.
Galerie Thomas, Munich

Far left K. T. Lenk Structure 28 (model
for a sign in the plain) 1965
aluminium 13; x 13¾ x 4 in.
Rowan Gallery, London

Left Lothar Quinte Untitled 1966
acrylic on canvas
Galerie Muller, Stuttgart

shown by the gallery in March, also works with pressionist graphic cycles in the galleries along the a city where every artist tries his hand at angular
effects of reflected light. Entire walls were covered Maximilianstrasse, but he will look in vain for shapes, colour gradations and complex forms—
with gigantic mirrors, in front of which metal foil young German art. Recently the GALERIE THOMAS usually against a background of more troublesome
rose up like plant life—a cross between the giant alone has shown significant young German artists problems. It is precisely this kind of schizophrenic
aquaria of Florida and the Hall of Mirrors at with examples of work by Eduard Micus or Gernot experience with the international avant-garde which
Versailles. These effects are in no way so convinc- Bubenik. The work of the 25-year-old Bubenik, makes Bischofsberger's exhibitions a corner-stone
ing as the stark structures which led to Mack's one of the most successful young German artists, of artistic life in Zürich: one can see how other
membership of the ZERO Group, but the silvery is certainly well worth looking at; just as Lichten- artists do things differently, but not always better.
landscape was ready-made for Hans Frieder stein uses comic strips, so Bubenik takes drawings Early in January the same gallery exhibited works
Mayer, the gallery's manager, to stage one of his from biology textbooks and turns them into a kind by a young Swiss artist, Müller-Brittnau (born
famous opening spectacles when silvery 'fairies' of `biomorphic soft-edge painting'. 1938), who applies concrete systematic concepts to
and Heinz Mack, representing a blond astronaut, The position in Zürich is much the same. But an ambitious style of colour painting; he creates
glided through those grottoes of cool art to the ac- there the reduction of artistic life to a level of free colour signals without departing from the
companiment of beat music. regional insignificance is not a result of historical static weight of serial symmetry.
The (op)-art Gallerie shows that the regional dis- exhaustion; it is much truer to say that the inter- Earlier in this article I raised the question as to
persal of activities does allow an important gallery national recognition given to Richard P. Lohse or the extent to which a gallery should join its
to be set up in a small town. On the other hand, Max Bill has led to a massive eruption of concrete regional roots to the claims of international art
cities like Munich or Zürich prove that inter- art in Switzerland which casts a shadow even on life; the international influence, it seems, is very
national centres are not necessarily privileged to the work of the great protagonists. How invigorat- important, provided it finds a genuine counterpart
house artistic life of more than regional impor- ing to see an exhibition of works by those incredible in regional traditions. In Germany, however, the
tance. Munich, once the centre of German expres- Americans whose exploits we read of in magazines ! problem becomes more complicated because of
sionism, is today almost a dead city in so far as At least one would expect it to be invigorating. But the big gap in the national tradition created by
living arts are concerned. The visitor, it is true, all the promised liveliness vanished when GALERIE twelve years of Nazi rule; as a result internation-
will find representatives of modern South American BISCHOFSBERGER recently exhibited works by Frank alism tends to replace the real artistic tradition.
art at GALERIE BUCHHOLZ and inexhaustible Ex- Stella : the New York messiah's halo soon faded in It is worth considering this possibility before