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Background information
"With recourse to the stylistic principles of the 1920s, Fritz KÜHN, a dilettante East Berlin artist and photographer, succeeded until his early death in July 1967 in countering the doctrine of Socialist Realism with time-removed light images in the spirit of pantheism. Eight editions of his first publication, 'Sehen und Gestalten' (Seeing and Shaping) from 1951 (repeatedly reprinted until 1970), testify to how strong the need for ideologically unencumbered eye food must have been, especially immediately after the founding of the GDR. In order to emphasize the correlations between 'nature and man's work', the artisan, strongly influenced by the plant portraits of a Karl BLOSSFELDT, had enriched the material from his own resources with motifs by Albert RENGER-PATZSCH, Friedrich SEIDENSTÜCKER and six other professional photographers. The five following illustrated volumes by the artist, who was increasingly fascinated by the 'subjective photography' of an Otto STEINERT and who enjoyed a kind of fool's freedom in the GDR thanks to foreign commissions carrying high foreign exchange rates, got by without borrowing from colleagues. His photographic estate, comprising more than three thousand negatives, has been in the care of the Berlinische Galerie since 1993. In 1998, the gallery published the first monograph of this branch of the work of the metal designer, who was mainly concerned with ecclesiastical or state commissions for "art in architecture", written by Andreas Krase without any hagiographic overtones.
Content
The selection of masterly printed motifs in the volume 'Fritz Kühn. Das photographische Werk 1931-1967' subverts the chronological sequence of the dates of creation with keywords such as 'landscape', 'shadows', 'structures' or 'steps'. The title picture shows a view of the Adriatic Sea taken in 1958 during a trip to Italy, partially blocked by lowered blinds, which mutates into a romantic motif of longing through a shadowy figure on the back. The sequence from the mostly unpublished Italian 'picture stagings' is undoubtedly one of the most sovereign samples from the photographic oeuvre of the passionate amateur, who was largely untouched by the aesthetic obstructions in the GDR." (adapted version, for the original text: © F.A.Z. GmbH, Frankfurt am Main)