Paul Maenz

Paul Maenz (born December 7, 1939 in Gelsenkirchen ) is a German gallery owner , art collector and publicist for modern art.

Life

After finishing school, Maenz first worked as an apprentice in a department store, then as a typesetter in a printing company. From 1958 he studied with Max Burchartz at the Folkwang School in Essen . In the early 1960s, he worked as a commercial artist and art director at the advertising agency Young & Rubicam (Y&R) in Frankfurt am Main . There he met the artists Charlotte Posenenske and Peter Roehr , with whom he was a close friend until Roehr's early death. After a short stay at Y&R in Paris , Maenz moved to New York and worked there as art director at Y&R from autumn 1965 to early 1967. Maenz came into contact with current art trends in New York. In 1966, in a programmatic exhibition that had become legendary, entitled Primary Structures , the Jewish Museum first showed works of Minimal Art that impressed Maenz. With Willoughby Sharp he founded the Kineticism Press in 1966 , which had its office at 200 Park Avenue , the Pan Am Building in Manhattan .

Back in Frankfurt he organized two groundbreaking exhibitions: from May 22nd to June 30th, 1967 together with Peter Roehr “Serielle Formationen” in the Studio Gallery of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University and on September 9th, 1967 “7.45pm - 9:55 pm . September 9th. 1967. Frankfurt. Germany. All these little hearts will one day belong to you ”in Dorothea Loehr's gallery in Frankfurt-Niederursel . In January 1968, he and Peter Roehr opened the 60 m² store Pudding-Explosion in the Holzgraben in Frankfurt , which, according to its two owners, offered “psychedelic meals with hippie accessories”. It was the first store of its kind in Germany to offer a wide range of political, spiritual and ironic articles, from incense sticks to the Peking Rundschau.

Gallery owner

In 1971 he founded a gallery with the musicologist Gerd de Vries in a backyard in Cologne at Lindenstrasse 32 and opened an exhibition by the artist Hans Haacke . A presentation of the works of Joseph Kosuth followed . He then introduced other young artists of Minimal Art and Conceptual Art , who are now represented in all important museums for modern art. In 1973 he opened a second gallery on Avenue Louise in Brussels , but it was less successful and was closed again the following year. Maenz quickly became one of the most respected and committed gallery owners. After moving to more representative rooms at Bismarckstraße 50, a back loft built by the architect Thiess Marwede, Maenz showed the artist Daniel Buren , the artists of the “ Mülheimer Freiheit ” and the Italian “ Transavantgarde ”. He worked with the leading galleries such as Gian Enzo Sperone in Turin, Ileana Sonnabend in Paris, Leo Castelli , Mary Boone and Marian Goodman in New York, Ascan Crone in Hamburg and Reinhard Onnasch in Berlin. In 1990 Maenz unexpectedly ended his exhibition activities. He was considered one of the most successful international gallery owners of the 1970s and 1980s.

Art collector

In 1993 Maenz agreed with the Weimar Art Collections to give part of his collection as a permanent loan to the future New Museum in Weimar , which finally opened in 1999 . Another part of the Maenz collection was purchased by the museum, and further works could be secured for the museum through the connections of the art collector, including the installations by Sol LeWitt in the foyer, the staircase concept by Daniel Buren and the Robert Barry in the museum café. His former partner Gert de Vries left its art library to the Neues Museum.

After only five years, Maenz terminated the loan agreements with the Weimar art collections in due time due to discrepancies over the conception and withdrew his part of the collection. Maenz accused the Weimar Classic Foundation of neglecting the museum.

Fonts

• Art is to change . Lindinger + Schmid art projects and publishing house, 2002 ISBN 978-3-929970-48-7
• with Werner Lippert: Peter Roehr . Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt 1991
• Francesco Clemente. Il viaggiatore napoletano . Gerd De Vries, 1982 Cologne, ISBN 3-88375-020-4
• Nine exhibitions 81/82 nine shows . Paul Maenz Gallery, Cologne 1983
• (Ed.): The Fer Collection - the Fer Collection, Gerd de Vries Cologne 1983
• Cologne 1970-1980. The look back is a look at the present and / or the truth has many breasts . Paul Maenz Gallery, Cologne 1980
• with Gerd de Vries: Salvo: Della Pittura - Imitazione di Wittgenstein. On Painting - In the Style of Wittgenstein. About painting - in the style of Wittgenstein . König, Cologne 1980
• Art deco. Forms between two wars . DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1974
• with Peter Roehr: Serial Formations . University of Frankfurt am Main, Student House Foundation, 1967
• All these little hearts will one day belong to you. 19:45 - 21:55. September 9th. 1967. Frankfurt. Germany. Participating: Jan Dibbets, Barry Flanagan, Bernhard Höke, John Johnson, Richard Long, Konrad Lueg, Charlotte Posenenske, Peter Roehr . Paul Maenz, Cologne 1967
• with Willoughby Sharp: Günther Uecker: 10 Years of a Kineticist's Work . Kineticism Press, New York 1966

literature

• An avant-garde gallery and the art of our time. Paul Maenz Cologne - 1970–1980–1990 . DuMont, Ostfildern 1991 ISBN 978-3-7701-2735-1

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Maenz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography at Online Archive of California (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hippie accessories: Read me, baby . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1968, p. 76 ( online ).
2. ↑ Heinz-Norbert Jocks in conversation with Paul Maenz, in: Kunstforum International, Volume 160, 2002, p. 443
3. ↑ Ingeborg Wiensowski: Paul Maenz - All of this, darling, will one day be yours . In: Kultur SPIEGEL , 1/1999, December 28, 1998, p. 24
4. ↑ Reinhard Beuth: Where the Gauleiter once sat in Weimar . In: Die Welt , January 2, 1999
5. ↑ Veronika Schuster: Weimar Capital of Culture? - The withdrawal of the Paul Maenz collection from the Neues Museum . Interview with Paul Maenz (PDF; 121 kB)