Neue Illustration

Since the wall came down, German illustration has experienced a surprising renaissance.  “Neue Illustration“, an exhibition by eleven German illustrators at NYU’s Deutsches Haus, celebrates the small-press publishing that has taken place since 1989, with a lively collection of illustrated books, posters and drawings. The texts range  from Goethe to T.C. Boyle. Whether  expressive or tender, skillfully drawn or minimalist, the artists display their mastery of the printing process  and ability to create  bold images.

The instigator of the show is Armin Abmeier, literature fiend, collector of printed matter, and  a leading advocate of illustration in Germany. He has won wide recognition  with the publication of his  comics and Dada inspired  series Tolle Hefte (Great Booklets). Eleven of the illustrators are on view: Atak, R.S. Berner, Wolf Erlbruch, Anke Feuchtenberger, Moritz Goëtze, Yvonne Kuschel, Thomas Muëller, Christoph Niemann, Volker Pfuëller, Axel Scheffler, and Henning Wagenbreth.

 

The primitive printing techniques of many East German publishers required artists to make their color separations by hand. This forced artists to master their craft and  produce  images  rich in layers. A catalog with original postcards by the artists has been published on the occasion of the exhibition.

Henning Wagenbreth was born in Eberswalde (former East Germany) in 1962. He’s a professor of visual communication at the Universitaët der Kuënste  in Berlin, since 1994. Wagenbreth’s “Geheimnis der Insel St. Helena“ (Secret of the island St. Helena), the most recent issue of Abmeier’s Tolle Hefte.  At first, it‘s a detailed account of the exhumation of Napoleon’s corpse in the words of his contemporaries.  It then turns into a hellish description of an  underworld of James Bond like dimensions, with Zombies running Napoleon’s modern weapon factories. Wagenbreth’s style is very distinct, with a few bright colors confined in black outlines, fine patterns, and – despite a technoid look and his use of the computer  – a feeling for the hand-made.  In Wagenbreth’s story, Posada meets George Orwell.

Yvonne Kuschel, born 1958 in Gdansk (Poland), emigrated to West Germany in 1972. Today  the freelance illustrator lives in Berlin with her family. She has published her drawings and text in several issues of Tolle Hefte, among them „ich bin ganz gluëcklich“ (I am quite happy) and „Die Zukunft gehoërt den Mutigen“ (the future belongs to the brave). She has mastered a sophisticated naivete of penmanship; the wild and the tame, the erotic and the childlike, the detail and the abstraction all come together  in her work. Indeed the confident shyness of her line conveys poetry, as she is a writer as well as an illustrator.

Thomas Muëller, born 1966 in the East German town of Gera, studied graphic design in Luzern (Switzerland) and Leipzig, where he lives with his family. In the series Tolle Hefte Mu?ller illustrated „Der Hardrock Himmel“, the German translation of T.C. Boyle’s 1980 story „Rock & Roll Heaven“. His signature illustrations feature bold ink strokes and cartoonish figures. The flat surfaces in bright colors are the background for his characters in distinct brush strokes - as the protagonist goes looking for heaven in Harlem, ready to play his guitar.