Bøger af Achim Gnann

The German painter, draftsman, and graphic artist Martin Noël (b. Berlin, 1956; d. Bonn, 2010) played a leading role in reviving the linocut and the woodcut, two techniques that had long been eclipsed by other media. In his large-format works on paper, he staked out a widely regarded and distinctive position in contemporary art. Released on occasion of the retrospective of his oeuvre at the Albertina, Vienna, this book presents an overview of the most important periods in the artist's creative evolution, with an emphasis on the woodcut carved into the printing plate and the woodblock's subsequent emancipation as an art object in its own right. Particular attention is paid to the application of ink to the surface and its painterly structure as well as the picture's migration from object to canvas. The resulting paintings are exemplary of Noël's late oeuvre.Martin Noël studied graphic art and painting at what is now the Cologne University of Arts and Sciences. His art garnered numerous prizes and other honors, including fellowships from Kunststiftung NRW, Stiftung Kunstfonds, and Letter Stiftung.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Rembrandt's oeuvre are his landscape drawings, around 260 of which have survived. Wandering through the city of Amsterdam, he depicted neighbourhoods, canals, houses along the city wall and bulwarks with picturesque windmills as well as distinctive individual buildings. Again and again he ventured into the surrounding landscape along the Amstel River or on the Kadijk and Diemerdijk, capturing characteristic scenes in quick sketches with pen and brush or black chalk. He was especially drawn to farmsteads with their neighbouring haystacks and groups of trees, depicting them in very different ways under changing conditions of light and weather. While some of his landscape studies are more expressive of an inner vision, in others the artist seeks to render the richness and beauty of natural forms with great attention to detail. In the late drawings, individual features dissolve into an atmosphere suffused with light and air.