Perlensucher
Mary Bauermeister - Möglichkeiten Serieller Malerei, 1959
2019
Mary Bauermeister (b. 1934 in Frankfurt am Main) lives and works in Rösrath near Cologne. After studying at the Ulm School of Design and the State School for Art in Saarbrücken, she opened her studio on Lintgasse in Cologne in 1960. Through numerous exhibitions and action events with such artists as Joseph Beuys, John Cage, and Wolf Vostell, it quickly evolved into a birthplace of the Fluxus movement and substantially contributed to the history of the Cologne art scene after 1945. Bauermeister’s first exhibition took place at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1962. Shortly thereafter she moved to New York. The artist made a name for herself there particularly with her “lens boxes” starting in 1964. Her marriage to the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and the couple’s plans to start a family led them to return to Germany at the beginning of the 1970s. Today Bauermeister’s works are found in such collections as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC; and the museum FLUXUS+ in Potsdam.
Möglichkeiten Serieller Malerei, 1959
As a supplement to Mary Bauermeister’s Magnetbild Schwarz-Weiss (1958), which was purchased by the Museum Ludwig, the Perlensucher have acquired thirty-four drawings by the artist.
With the aid of sketches and written notes, the drawings provide detailed information about the artist’s thoughts on her pictorial program and the possible variations of the four-part, painted work on wood. The series starts with the planning of the proportions of the individual elements, followed by the remaining thirty-three sheets, which feature schematic depictions of the different possible arrangements of the detachable magnetic plates.
Whereas Bauermeister’s Magnetbild Schwarz-Weiss was visually inspired by Abstract Expressionism, the Möglichkeiten Serieller Malerei stress a Conceptual, Minimalist focus. With their approach based on logical reasoning, the drawings are demonstrations of the intersection of scientific and artistic practices.