andreas brandt

29th of december 1935 - 4th of january 2016

Curation of Andreas Brandt’s solo exhibition at the Závodný Gallery was in the hands of Hans-Peter Riese, a German journalist, publicist, and author of numerous art-related texts. The curatorial selection seems to be exceptional in its own way, highly personal and original. It traces the timeline during which the artworks were created, but more importantly, it seeks to uncover the essence of the artist’s creative process. Since Riese maintains long-standing friendships with "his" artists and frequently visits their studios, he sensitively perceives the milestones in their artistic journeys, their mental states, and the delicate moments of searching and making decisions.

Visitors can observe the distinct phases of Andreas Brandt artistic development, even though his paintings are relatively sparse and minimalist. His works from the 1960s and early 1970s are characterized by the use of strictly defined bands or stripes of varying widths on a white background. There are parallels to the approaches of American modernist painters like Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt, along with a connection to Concrete art, which had a strong base in German-speaking countries at that time. The format of the paintings is predominantly horizontal, and the colour palette consists of pure primary colours—mainly yellow, green, and blue—generating contrast to the white background.

Already in the 1970s, Andreas Brandt began using shades of gray. Placed alongside bright primary colours, gray toning creates an unique effect. It gives the impression that the paintings are composed in several layers and seem deeper. Of course, this is merely an illusion, but the human eye perceives an additional dimension. Moreover, the gray tones soften and calm the paintings, lending them a meditative quality.

Brandt’s paintings from the late 1980s and 1990s are lively, characterized by the crossing of vertical and horizontal lines, often deliberately extending across the entire surface of the canvas. The lines, with their bold colour accents, sharply contrast with black stripes, creating an aestheticized pictorial space reminiscent of architecture. It´s tempting to feel a certain relation with the works of František Kupka (e.g., the Elevation series or Language of Verticals). This impression is intensified by the vertical orientation of Brandt’s works. Regardless of whether my assumption is accurate, the series brings new stimuli to the Brandt´s creative way.

The works created after 2000 surprise with their sense of rhythm. Coloured bands are arranged in ascending and descending combinations, unintentionally resembling musical notation, or—more surprisingly—the paintings are divided in two equally sized sections, defined by the colours of the surface, which are no longer necessarily white. In these two segments, Andreas Brandt lets his simple elements rank in a way pushing the viewer to search for order, sequence, and the system in their arrangement.

In 1955, Andreas Brandt participated in Documenta I in Kassel, curated by the event’s founder, Arnold Bode. This grand exhibition of contemporary art, presented in a city nearly destroyed by the end of World War II, is nowadays seen as a prestigious and important event that launched a set of exhibitions of current art, held at five-year intervals.

Andreas Brandt was invited to participate in international residencies and scholarship programmes in places such as Paris, New York, California, Stockholm, Los Angeles, and Mexico’s Yucatán. His works are held in numerous public and private collections, in 1990 he was awarded the Camille–Graeser–Preis in Zűrich.

The Závodný Gallery would like to sincerely thank David Brandt and Cornelia Brandt for their assistance in