Artists from Leipzig Published by Arario.
Text by Yun Chea Gab, Henna Jou, Aristide Fenster. Featuring work by Tilo Baumgärtel, Martin Kobe, Uwe Kowski and Tobias Lehner, among others, this volume surveys influential players from the New Leipzig School--painters who have emerged from the venerable Leipzig Art Academy in the former G.D.R. The academy has a reputation for turning out painters skilled in the figurative art tradition. Because of the iron curtain and the Berlin Wall, the West's frenzy for abstraction never quite reached East Germany. Today, painters who have emerged from the academy post-unification are still steeped in this figurative tradition--though they are freely borrowing styles from other cultures, movements and periods. What these painters have in common is that the content of their work depicts the intense social change that Germany has undergone since unification. As critic Arthur Lubow observes, "The first hint of a shift appeared in 1997, when Neo Rauch won the art prize of the local newspaper, the Leipziger Volkszeitung. Rauch, now 45, came of age in the G.D.R., but he was young enough to absorb the imagery of comic books, television and computer graphics that shaped the stylistic tastes of his generation."
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