Achim Borchardt-Hume Books

Born in Denmark in 1938, Per Kirkeby gained renown as a leading figure in the New Painting movement of the 1980s, alongside artists such as Georg Baselitz and A.R. Penck. Kirkeby’s fervent excavation of art history across a range of styles and media reflect his training as a geologist. This lavishly illustrated book, the most comprehensive volume on Kirkeby ever published in English, traces the trajectory of an artistic career that has spanned half a century.Beginning with Kirkeby’s early history paintings and moving through his engagement with Pop Art, sculpture, large-scale “heroic” paintings, and his pastoral “Walden” series of the 1990s, the book contrasts his monumental works with previously unpublished small-scale watercolors of Greenland landscapes, etchings, and the blackboards on which Kirkeby mapped out his ideas. With a newly commissioned essay by Richard Shiff, an interview with the artist conducted by curator Achim Borchardt-Hume, and a selection of Kirkeby’s own extensive writings, the book provides invaluable insight into the mind of an inimitable artist.

Gerhard Richter is widely seen as one of the most important painters at work in the world today. Born in Dresden, Germany, in 1932, he left for the West in 1961, settling in Dusseldorf, where he held his first exhibition in 1963. He has exhibited internationally for the last five decades, including retrospectives in New York, Paris and Dusseldorf. He lives and works in Cologne. As the artist draws near to his eightieth birthday in 2012, Tate Modern in collaboration with the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, is staging a major retrospective exhibition. Exhibition: Tate Modern, London 6 October 2011 - 8 January 2012 / Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin February - April 2012 / Centre Pompidou, Paris 6 June - 24 September 2012.

Mel Bochner (*1940) ist einer der Gründerfiguren der Konzeptkunst. Er gehört zu der New Yorker Künstlergeneration, die sich in den 1960er Jahren mit dem seinerzeit ausgerufenen 'Ende der Malerei' auseinandersetzte. Bochner war einer der Ersten, die Sprache im Bildraum einsetzten. Er verwendet für seine Arbeiten vielfältige Systeme, um Strukturen zu schaffen: Zahlen, Abmessungen, Reihen, Wiederholungen. Farbe mag ein ungewöhnlicher Ausgangspunkt sein, um das Lebenswerk gerade dieses Künstlers zu erkunden, doch die Installationen, Fotografien, Skultpruen und Gemälde sowie die neuesten Thesaurus-Gemälde belegen, dass Farbe Mel Bochner schon immer beschäftigt hat. Die vorliegende Publikation begleitet die erste umfassende Werkschau des Künstlers in Europa. Ausgewisene Experten beleuchten das Œuvre des Künstlers: Achim Borchardt-Hume untersucht die Rolle der Farbe in bochners neuesten Werken, Ulrich Wilmes widmet sich den letzten Arbeiten im Zusammenhang mit dem früheren Schaffen, João Fernandes erforscht die Sprache und Briony Fer befasst sich mit Astraktion und Korruption bei Bochner.