Heinz Liesbrock Books

Joachim Brohm Bwas' "Ruhr" documents the industrial decline of the West German valley from which it takes its name--an area that was once home to Germany's coal mining and steel production centers, as well as other heavy and light manufacturing, and later became famous for its high degree of air pollution. This work, made between the late 1970s and the mid-80s, made Brohm one of the first German photographers to engage with the issues raised by American landscape photography--both that of the nineteenth century and the topographical work being done from 1970 onwards--and to transport it into the European context in which it has since thrived. "Ruhr" is an integral link between U.S. and European photography, whose significance is confirmed with its first complete publication here.

From the outset, the paintings of Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967) were from the start defined by clear, geometric forms. An encounter with Josef Albers in the late 1930s greatly influenced Reinhardt's subsequent approach to color, and the two artists maintained a lifelong respect for one another's work (in 1952 Albers offered Reinhardt a guest professorship at Yale, where he was then teaching). The sympathies between their arts lie in the extremity of their geometric reductions, which Reinhardt eventually also applied to color by reducing it to minutely differentiated squares of black on a five-square-foot canvas; but both Albers and Reinhardt envision painting as an art of geometric combinations of color. Reinhardt's statement that his black paintings were "the last paintings anyone can make" betrays his debt to Albers, for his works do indeed seem to conclude the investigations opened by Albers' Homage to the Square series. This volume surveys their affinities.

Die Ausstellung 'Letzte Bilder' zeigt nicht nur selten präsentierte Werke von Ad Reinhardt, sondern geht auch auf die Begegnung zwischen ihm und Josef Albers im Jahr 1952/53 ein. Dabei entwickelte sich zwischen beiden Künstlern ein Gespräch über die Bedeutung der Farbe im malerischen Prozess, insbesondere wenn es darum geht, mit chromatisch eng beieinander liegenden Farben eine visuelle Dynamik zu erreichen. Für Reinhardt war dieser Kontakt mit dem älteren Josef Albers offensichtlich ein wichtiger Impuls auf seinem Weg hin zu den 'schwarzen' Bildern. So werden in dieser Ausstellung die Bilder von Reinhardt durch einige Werke von Albers ergänzt. Exhibition: Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop (26.9.2010-9.1.2011).