In 2013 the British Museum received a gift of 67 works on paper from the collection of Count Christian Duerckheim. The works are by four German and Austrian artists who are relatively unknown in the UK, being:
- Karl Bohrmann (German)
- Rudi Tröger (German)
- Carl-Heinz Wegert (German)
- Hermann Nitsch (Austrian)
This FREE exhibition displays about a dozen or so works by each of the four. What they all had in common was a preference for drawing over painting, sculpture etc, which is why the exhibition is situated in the Museum’s print rooms up on the third floor.
Drawing in post-war Germany
From the 1960s drawing assumed a prominent position among a rising generation of post-war artists in Germany and Austria. The works of the three Germans is characterised by a quiet introspection and they largely shunned the limelight of the art world.
Karl Bohrmann (1928 to 1998)
Karl Bohrmann was born in the southern German city of Mannheim in 1928. He studied art in Saarbrucken and from 1948 to 1949 Stuttgart. In 1959 he moved to Munich and started exhibiting regularly. In 1961 he travelled to Paris and encountered the work of Giacometti.
Although he made paintings and prints, drawing was Bohrmann’s preferred medium. From the 1970s he taught at the art school in Frankfurt. By the 1990s he was living in a tiny flat in Cologne, stacked with piles of his drawings – female nudes, still lifes, interiors. His last works were drawn on the back of architectural drafting paper, invoices or old manuscripts. Quietly introspective, they are informed by his dictum: ‘A drawn line is a moment in time through which the artist has lived’.
Drawing by Karl Bohrmann as featured in ‘Gesture and line: Four post-war German and Austrian artists at the British Museum’ © The Trustees of the British Museum
His abstracts are nice enough but what stood out for me was two pairs of rough female nudes, one set in blue, one in red, which stood out as striking images. I really like the combination of big expressive lines creating the image and the space it’s set in, with pale washes gesturing at perspective, and then patches of intense rich blue, particularly in the figure on the left.
The combination of untouched paper with patches of intense colouring create a great visual dynamic. They also indicate the interior space the figure is in, which seems more than domestic, somehow troubled or stricken, a prison cell maybe. Maybe the figure on the left is hanging from a rope, maybe not, but it feels very intense.
Installation view of Untitled (blue female nudes) by Karl Bohrmann (1995). Photo by the author
Rudi Tröger (born 1929)
Tröger is a painter, draughtsman and printmaker who has chosen to live a secluded life away from the art world. He trained at the Munich Art Academy where he met his wife, Klara Weghofer, a textile student who he married in the early 1960s. He went on to be a teacher at the academy from 1967 to his retirement in 1992.
The 16 drawings by Tröger in the Duerckheim gift span the period from the late 1950s to the 1980s. The early ones are figure drawings executed in a thick graphite line, but it was during the 1960s that Tröger developed the thin, wispy line characteristic of his pen and ink drawings.
Ordinary domestic scenes featuring Klara and his family are set in the studio, home or garden. The distorted space and elongated figures give his drawings their highly charged, introspective vision. Tröger once explained what he was after: ‘Drawing something so that it becomes something else’.
Untitled by Rudi Tröger © The Trustees of the British Museum
I think it’s fair to say I actively disliked all the Rudi Tröger drawings on show. A quick skim of the internet suggests that his paintings are much, much better than these drawings.
Carl-Heinz Wegert (1926 to 2007)
Wegert was born and spent most of his life in Munich. A shy, retiring individual, Wegert deliberately avoided the art world as much as possible and it was only due to sponsors like Count Christian Duerckheim and a few others that he was able to survive as an artist.
Wegert worked in collage, drawing, photography and sculpture. Wegert’s sensitive drawings are characterised by a weblike delicacy, creating entire microcosms from just a few spare lines. Some of his larger drawings from the 1980s suggest a spiritual affinity with Japanese Zen, and sometimes go so far as to include a haiku poem or a Chinese seal in the composition.
Untitled by Carl-Heinz Wegert (1986) Blue oil pastel, yellow wash and pencil on white paper © The Trustees of the British Museum
I think Wegert’s work is the subtlest of the four and the easiest to overlook, so delicate that a lot of them placed together dilute the effect. They require the effort to be looked at and pondered individually. So the more you ponder the work, above, I think the more it does its subtle work.
Hermann Nitsch (1938 to 2022)
Nitsch is the only Austrian from the group and, in contrast to the quiet Germans he is a very ‘loud’ presence. From the 1960s Nitsch attracted public controversy through his highly provocative performances, or ‘Actions’, involving nudity, animal slaughter and Christian symbolism.
From 1957 until his death in 2022 the principal theme of his work was the Orgien Mysteriens Theaters, consisting of immersive performances bringing together music, painting and performance, saturating all the senses in semi-ritualistic events designed to attain what he claimed was a ‘more purified place of consciousness’. The events involved scores of participants and took place at the Schloss Prinzendorf, a rundown castle he bought in the 1970s and adapted for his performances.
Nitsch’s prints were a spin-off from this grand project. The 15 lithographs in the Dürckheim gift come from the huge printmaking project which Nitsch ran from 1984 to 1993. Working with the Munich printer Karl Imhof, Nitsch produced hundreds of lithographs in multiple iterations and combinations.
In this one Nitsch drew directly onto the lithographic stone to present an anatomical figure in several layers. The skin has been cut away to reveal the sinews and intestines of the human figure. Nitsch makes reference to Leonardo’s écorché drawings (‘a painting or sculpture of a human figure with the skin removed to display the musculature.’) and to his technique of mirror writing (which you can see in the upper middle of the image).
Installation view of ‘Untitled’ from the series ‘The Architecture of the Orgies Mystery Theatre’ (1984 to 1993) by Hermann Nitsch. Photo by the author
Bloodthirsty, gruesome, but bold and distinctive. The one below is a schematic architectural drawing showing the projected plan for an underground theatre on different levels. Each of the rooms is marked with a different number. The blotches of black ink either indicate that they’re working plans or maybe neglect and ruin. There’s a strong science fiction vibe about Nitsch’s work.
Installation view of ‘Untitled’ from the series ‘The Architecture of the Orgies Mystery Theatre’ (1984 to 1993) by Hermann Nitsch. Photo by the author
Conclusion
By itself this show is maybe not quite worth the hassle of catching the Tube and waiting in the long British Museum queue – but if you’re going to see either the Le Moyne botanical drawings or the Ed Ruscha Insects, then it’s definitely worth making the effort to see these, too. The Bohrmann nudes a bit, but especially the Nitsch works – they have the most distinctive look and impact. And once you’ve processed these, maybe the quieter and Wegert works will work their magic…
Related links
- Gesture and line: Four post-war German and Austrian artists continues in Room 90 at the British Museum until 1 April 2024
- German industrialist gives collection of postwar art to British Museum (Guardian, 2013)
Books & Boots 