Joshua Reichert
Josua Reichert (born June 8, 1937 in Stuttgart ) is a German printer , typographer , graphic artist and author who lives and works in Haidholzen (municipality of Stephanskirchen ) near Rosenheim .
plant
In the field of typography, Josua Reichert is considered the most important contemporary European artist. In the works of Reichert, who received decisive impulses from HAP Grieshaber and Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman , writing and image, text and typography merge into a new unit and lead into a new aesthetic dimension. Reichert's unique and innovative work, which was created over five decades, impresses with its inner coherence and extreme consistency.
With his powerful, colored text images, Reichert spans a wide range of written cultures, world literatures and times. He prints with Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Arabic scripts; his text canon ranges from antiquity to the present day. He does not allow a restriction to cultures and epochs. The yardstick for the selection of the poems, fragments and sentences that the literature lover takes out of books of all time and transforms them into written images is their poetic quality and validity. The texts have to touch his heart and inspire his typographic imagination. The text images that he shows the viewer require both reading and seeing.
From the beginning he also prints typographical images, which he calls “Poesia Typographica”: letter architectures and letter landscapes mostly, but also images in which letters or even words are completely missing, compositions of lines, points, circles, rectangles and triangles.
The complete works of Reichert, who took part in documenta 4 in 1968 , include the groups of works “Stempeldrucke”, “Poesia Typographica”, “Collages”, “Einblattdrucke”, the “Haidholzener Psalter” (over one hundred different prints of around thirty psalms), “Posters "(Around 160 artist posters have been produced since 1960)," Handprints "(rubbing prints with a spoon that appear as if they were painted)," Text-pictures "and" Folders, codices, books and folded sheets ".
His books include “The Printer Car. From the printer's travel, diaries, fairy tales and picture books ”and the“ Creation alphabet from the Book of Sohar ”, both published as prints by the Sisyphos press in Leipzig.
A specific feature of Reichert's work is a series of booklets, brochures and bundles that he has been printing since the late 1980s and the number of which has now grown to around 60. The printed pieces, which vary in format and scope, contain original types, illustrations, photos as well as own and third-party texts. There are contributions by various authors to Reichert's art of printing and autobiographical abstracts and carefully worked out self-assurances before the history of typography. As a result of the booklet, an autobiography emerges, a work-in-progress documentation that cannot be compared in literature or the visual arts. It is precisely in these issues that the author Reichert appears.
Several hundred works by the printer are in public ownership. They mostly hang in libraries, educational institutions, administration buildings, courts, clinics and in a castle chapel. For example, the “Stuttgarter Drucke”, 36 large-format works, can be seen in the Württemberg State Library . In Garching near Munich, in front of the storage library of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, there is a six-meter-high Corten steel sculpture by the artist.
Vita
- Born in Stuttgart in 1937
- 1959 studies with HAP Grieshaber at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe
- 1960 own workshop in Stuttgart, then in Munich
- 1963/1967 participation in the III. and 5th Youth Biennial Paris
- 1968 Participation in documenta 4 in Kassel
- 1969 guest lecturer at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy , Amsterdam
- 1972 moved to Haidholzen, Stephanskirchen / Simssee, member of the German Association of Artists
- 1995/2001 lecturer for high pressure, summer academy Neuburg / Donau
Scholarships
- 1964 Geschwister-Boehringer-Ingelheim-Foundation for the promotion of the humanities
- 1966 culture group in the Federation of German Industry
- 1987 Karl Rössing travel grant from the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich
Prizes and awards
- 1963 German youth art award for graphics
- 1964 Certificate of Merit, Art Directors Club of New York
- 1967 Prize at the 9th São Paulo Biennale
- 1968 Award of the City of Munich
- 1999 Ludwigsburg Antiquarian Prize
- 2000 Federal Cross of Merit
- 2003 professor title, awarded by the state of Baden-Württemberg
- 2010 Jerg Ratgeb Prize of the HAP Grieshaber Foundation, Reutlingen
- 2018 Culture Prize of the City of Rosenheim
Exhibitions
Over 200 solo exhibitions at home and abroad, for example in Berlin, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Munich, Baden-Baden, Frankfurt a. M., Offenbach a. M., Altenburg, Bonn, Reutlingen, Dublin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Milan, Rome, Lisbon, Rabat and Istanbul.
Stuttgart prints
After the completion of the new building for the Württemberg State Library in 1970, the interior should also be artistically designed. First of all, fabric prints based on woodcuts by HAP Grieshaber were selected for this. Since the decision-making bodies questioned the durability of the prints, Grieshaber's pupil Josua Reichert was commissioned to decorate the library with large-format writing boards, which became known as "Stuttgarter Drucke".
The panels show, stylishly and artistically arranged, rectangular "text images" with examples of letters and text, and examples of "Poesia Typographica" on circular images (see above ). The formats vary between 100 and 280 cm in height and width, the round pictures have a diameter of about one meter. With his “Stuttgart prints” Josua Reichert freed typography from its “prison” between the book covers, where only the book reader can see it, while the typography boards in the state library are allowed to lead their own life as free works of art.
The 36 boards were hung in two installments in 1971 and 1973 all over the house on walls and pillars in the library. Anyone who moves inside the library “stumbles” with their eyes over the panels, which look like “cast on” in this temple of the printed word. Not all boards can be found straight away; some hang in less frequented places, for example in the corridor to the management rooms or in the stairwell to the special reading room.
Josua Reichert reports on the creation of his Stuttgart prints:
“The condition that a work of art must be firmly connected to the building almost brought me to my knees at the first discussion of the work for the Württemberg State Library. I saw glass windows, graffiti, mosaics, floors, frescoes, painted concrete walls. I didn't see any prints on the walls. Then I succeeded in convincing the commission that a large print, if it is glazed and framed, is already firmly attached to the building by its weight alone. With the work on the 'Stuttgarter Drucker', something completely new began for me, which was to determine the two decades that followed. My interest shifted to large-format hand printing. "
Fragment of a poem by Alcaios , SB 12.
Antiphon by Notker Albulus , SB 15.
Poem by Fariduddin Attar , SB 18.
Line of poems by Gertrude Stein , SB 24.
Fragment of a poem by Sappho , SB 13, and Cyrillic type sheet, SB 25.
literature
Catalog raisonné
- Catalog raisonné 1959–1995. Edited by Waltraut Pfäfflin and Klaus Maurice. With comments by the artist on his work groups. Verlag Gerd Hatje, Ostfildern-Ruit 1997, ISBN 978-3-7757-0641-4
Catalogs
- Passionate love. An exhibition in the Goethe year by Josua Reichert. Offenbach am Main 1982: Klingspor Museum
- Josua Reichert, Jutta Penndorf (Red.): Poesia Typographica. Altenburg 1989: State Lindenau Museum
- Josua Reichert, Beate Grubert-Thurow (Red.). Hand prints 1971-1994. Municipal Art Museum Spendhaus, Reutlingen 1995, ISBN 978-3-86104-008-8
- Ina Prinz (Ed.): Josua Reichert in the Arithmeum. Arithmeum in the Research Institute for Discrete Mathematics, Bonn 1999, ISBN 978-3-416-02936-0
- Repeated reflections. Typographic images by HN Werkman, Willem Sandberg, HAP Grieshaber, Josua Reichert, Ewald Spieker. With a text by Wolfgang Glöckner. Municipal Gallery, Rosenheim 2005
- Wolfgang Glöckner: Printing is a way of life. The printer Josua Reichert. Municipal Art Museum Spendhaus, Reutlingen 2010
- Joshua Reichert. The printer in Italy. With an introduction by Wolfgang Glöckner. Municipal Art Museum Spendhaus, Reutlingen 2010
Stuttgart prints
- M. Benzler: The Stuttgart prints by Josua Reichert. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1972. - With some work images in black and white or color and black and white interior photos with the Stuttgart prints.
- Vera Trost: "Art in Architecture" in the Württemberg State Library. In: WLB forum , year 12, 2010, issue 1, pages 30–37, here 34–37 online .
- Vera Trost: Art in Architecture. Bernhard Heiliger's “Montana I” and Josua Reicht's Stuttgart prints. In: Vera Trost (editor): Carl Eugen's legacy: 250 years of the Württemberg State Library; an exhibition by the Württemberg State Library on the occasion of its foundation on February 11, 1765 from February 11, 2015 to April 11, 2015. Stuttgart 2015, pages 116–123.
Collective works
- Reichert, Joshua . In: Supreme Building Authority Munich (Hrsg.): Bildwerk Bauwerk Artwork - 30 years of art and state building in Bavaria . Bruckmann, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7654-2308-4 , p. 62-63, 90, 124, 150-151, 184, 196 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Full members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Reichert, Josua ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on December 16, 2015)
- ↑ The number SB 14 refers to the catalog raisonné by Josua Reichert ( #Reichert 1997 ).
- ↑ #Trost 2015 , page 119.
- ↑ #Reichert 1997 .
- ↑ #Reichert 1997 , page 18.
- ↑ The numbers SB 7 etc. refer to the catalog raisonné by Josua Reichert ( #Reichert 1997 ).
Web links
- Literature by and about Josua Reichert in the catalog of the German National Library
- Materials by and about Josua Reichert in the documenta archive
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Reichert, Joshua |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German printer, typographer, graphic artist and author |
DATE OF BIRTH | June 8, 1937 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Stuttgart |