Georg Winter: German Woodcut after ’68

Cat. Städtisches Kunstmuseum Spendhaus Reutlingen

Exhibition catalogue, edited by Herbert Eichhorn
textes (German/English) by Uwe Degreif, Karsten Müller
112 p with 100 illustrations b/w
297 x 210 mm, softcover

ISBN 978-3-86442-059-7

19,80 €

The Real German Woodcut!

The museum is not the terrain Georg Winter prefers for his artistic work, and a by and large classical exhibition situation with works on paper on the walls is not the common format in which the artist otherwise articulates himself. Temporary laboratories, interdisciplinary research projects, or self-organizing performances are the field of activity with which Georg Winter operates in the public space and with which his work is automatically connected by the audience. From 2003 to 2009, Georg Winter held a professorship for art and public space at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg, and he has since been active at the Academy of Fine Arts at Saarland in Saarbrücken as a professor of sculpture and public art. In view of the artist’s great number of activities, it is easily overlooked that most of his projects are accompanied by striking woodcuts, and that these are also frequently included in this installative work. As a matter of fact, Georg Winter has consistently availd himself of this medium since his beginnings, and thus over the past decades a body of woodcuts has evolved that cmprises at total of several hundred motifs, of which this publication presents a cross-section and from which the exhibition at the Städtisches Kunstmuseum Spendhaus in Reutlingen only present a quintessential selection. Georg Winter’s work have little in common with the familiar woodcut aesthetic, which often relies on the sensuous and haptic qualities of an impasto application of paint and high-quality paper as a print substrate. Georg Winter always prints his motifs in completely homogenous black and on transparent paper. So some of his woodcuts seem to be descriptive diagrams that juxtapose the various technical devices used for his specific projects. This deliberately matter-of-fact tone he strikes almost seems to tie into what is nowadays practically unknown a line of tradition within the modern letterpress printing of the 1920s and how this was a developed practice for example of the Kölner Progressive or of Otto Neuraths Vienna based Museum of Society and Economy. And so is the title of the book »German Woodcut after ’68« by Georg Winter, an internationally networked artist who commutes between Germany and Hungary, all in all an ironic distinction from the nowadays again popular treatment of the medium woodcut!

Exhibition:
Städtisches Kunstmuseum Spendhaus, Reutlingen, 12/7–6/10/2013