And yet it spread: Despite governmental measures of quarantine it could not be achieved to exterminate the virus of formalism. With sturdiness and tricks artists remained true to be prone to geometry and abstraction in the restrictive GDR-climate.
The exhibition VIRUS FORM shows that especially in Dresden proper brooding herds of the alleged subversion existed. All of those who can only think of the name Hermann Glöckner (1889-1987) when tackling the subject will be in for a surprise. Thus the only student of Glöckner, Wilhelm Müller (1928-1999) appears on stage, cutting his own path of serial construction and funny overexpansion without being irritated by the regularities. Many others of his infected colleagues such as Leoni Wirth (1935-2012), Karl-Heinz Adler (*1927) or Friedrich Kracht (1925-2007) found their biotope close to architecture. The unrolling of cinder rather concrete ornaments called Formsteine by Adler for example, commissioned as architectural decoration, show in its draft and the realisation a conceptional inventive talent, keeping pace with the times of the international developments back then. The fountain models by Wirth nowadays function like independent poetically loaded sculptures. Similar to Hermann Glöckner (façade designer) and Wilhelm Müller (dentist) also Inge Thieß-Böttner (1924-1998) led a GDR-typical double life of an artist being a puppet maker and make-up artist by trade. Especially her experimental, often coloured linocuts, fascinate in their richness of variety between rational guideline and intuition. In one line with the philosophical investigations of minimalism, count the almost spiritual exercises of Manfred Luther (1925-2004), always based on a circle. He saw in that shape not only a geometrical element but a universal symbol. In various circles, theoretically fed by art historians like Werner Schmidt or Ingrid Adler, a sophisticated discourse dealing with this world of forms took place.
After 1989 younger artists such as Olaf Holzapfel (*1969) or Stefan Schröder (*1966) were infected by the avant-garde clarity of Müller, Glöckner and Adler and still name those artists as their role models up until today. The Dresden-based art academy lecturer Günther Hornig (*1937) also had a large influence. He pursued geometry with obstinacy and openness in his three-dimensional approaches and passed his enthusiasm. In 1993 the former Willi Baumeister student Ursula Sax (*1935) started lecturing at the Dresden academy of fine arts. With spatial objects and bold performances she refreshed the spirit of the Bauhaus and opened the gaze for new materials.
The excursion into the concrete and constructivist tradition of Dresden offers insights into the tightrope act between applied GDR modernity and autonomous work on the one hand. On the other hand this trip is to deal with the deconstruction of prejudices and the re-opening of long closed art history books. Also, for far too long this type of art has been arranged way to earnestly and auratic. The presentation of curator Susanne Altmann heartly overcomes those restrictions of ideology, chronology and choreography and establishes refreshing relationships. Therein she forges a bridge into the presence with its newly awakened interest of geometrical abstractions.
