Gesture and Line: Four Post-war German and Austrian Artists

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum of work by four German and Austrian artists from a recent gift of 67 works on paper by Count Christian Duerchein.

The show devoted a section to each of the four artists. I warmed more to the three Germans, Rudi Troger, Karl Bohrmann and Carl Heinz Wegert whose work was more introspective. Austrian, Herman Nitsch’s work was inspired by his rather strange sounding performance art.

I think my favourite was Troger who did expressive, figurative work often of his wife and home. There were some brilliant quotes from him such as the idea of “drawing something so it becomes something else” and that art is “expressing feelings with visual means”.

Talking quotes I also loved one by Bohrmann that “a drawn line is a moment of time though which the artist has lived”.

Closes 1 April 2024


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