Gerhard von Graevenitz

This article is about the artist. Not to be confused with the literary scholar Gerhart von Graevenitz .

Gerhard von Graevenitz (1966)

Gerhard von Graevenitz (born September 19, 1934 in Schilde , Prignitz district , Mark Brandenburg ; † August 20, 1983 at Habkern in Traubachtal , Switzerland ) was a German kinetic artist , representative of Op Art from early computer graphics and relief artist .

life and work

Gerhard von Graevenitz grew up in a district administrator's family as the youngest child of four brothers and a twin sister. From 1955 to 1956 he studied economics at the University of Frankfurt am Main and from 1956 to 1961 art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . From 1959 to 1960 he was editor of the magazine nota . In 1962 von Graevenitz co-founded the international movement nouvelle tendance ( New Tendencies ). Since 1970 he lived and worked in Amsterdam .

His first works in 1959 were monochrome reliefs. The design of kinetic objects followed from 1960 . In 1962 von Graevenitz began to use the new technical possibilities of computer graphics for the first time and to produce series of geometrically ordered grid structures as print graphics. In 1968 Gerhard von Graevenitz was represented with three objects at the 4th documenta in Kassel .

In his work von Graevenitz dealt with the phenomena of perception. Most of his graphics were created using the screen printing technique . In his early graphics he dealt with the relationships between shape and color and line and surface. In his kinetic objects he showed the connections between structure and movement and chance and order. Gerhard von Graevenitz died on August 20, 1983 in a plane crash in Switzerland.

Literature and Sources

• Exhibition catalog for the IV. Documenta: IV. Documenta. International exhibition ; Catalog: Volume 1: (Painting and Sculpture); Volume 2: (Graphics / Objects); Kassel 1968
• Kimpel, Harald / Stengel, Karin: documenta IV 1968 International Exhibition - A Photographic Reconstruction (series of publications from the documenta archive); Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86108-524-9
• Gerhard von Graevenitz - exhibition catalog, Kunsthalle Kiel , Kiel 1975
• Dieter Honisch (Vorw.): Art in the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1985 , National Gallery. Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-87584-158-1

Web links

Commons : Gerhard von Graevenitz  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Examples of his work
• Examples of his work: Museum Ritter
• Materials by and about Gerhard von Graevenitz in the documenta archive