Formfinden: Anton Stankowski

(Preface/Translation) "Inventing" is, by all accounts, Anton Stankowski's favourite work. Every day, the artist, born in Gelsenkirchen in 1906, practices "finding forms" or "images" in sketchbooks, on loose sheets of paper, and on graph paper. For the painter of concrete pictorial compositions and the internationally renowned graphic artist, for the experimental photographer and the clear analyst, inventing simultaneously means "ordering." In his search for new combinations of forms with which he can clearly visualise complex processes, Anton Stankowski has been consistently exploring, selecting, refining, and specifying the possibilities offered by the geometric vocabulary for over 60 years. "Aesthetics is order" is the motto with which Anton Stankowski succeeded, like hardly any other artist in this century, in mastering both the applied and the free fields.

Well over 2,000 design sketches – drawings, collages, and mixed media, which often served as the basis for world-famous company logos, prints, and oil paintings – were created between 1927 and 1991. They formed the source material for this volume, which for the first time offers a comprehensive insight into the systematic artist's workshop. Together with Günther Wirth, a friend of the artist and a connoisseur of his diverse oeuvre, Anton Stankowski has made a rigorous and consistent selection: 84 designs from all phases of his creative work are presented here as examples and reproduced – true to the work – in their original size.

In an introductory text, Günther Wirth traces Anton Stankowski's development from the Folkwang School in Essen through his years in Zurich to Stuttgart. It becomes clear: The desire to "humanize" art through clarity is as much a part of Anton Stankowski's work as the disrespectful violation of a rule once established. A productive principle with which the artist repeatedly creates new, ordered pictorial worlds, especially in his designs.'

Condition: Very Good. Shelf ware consistent with age. Light rubbing to cover/edges.

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