AUTUMN 2024
NEW RELEASES
‘The process of making a book is in many ways comparable to creating an exhibition. In both, we try to provide artists with the instruments necessary to make concrete their ideas.’
—Iwan Wirth, President, Hauser & Wirth
In keeping with Hauser & Wirth’s artist-centric vision, Hauser & Wirth Publishers works to bring readers into the universe of artists and behind the scenes of their practices. From publishing artists’ writings and exceptional exhibition-related books to commissioning new scholarship and pursuing the highest levels of craft in design and bookmaking, Hauser & Wirth Publishers creates vital, lasting records of artists’ work and ideas, forging critical gateways to the cultural discourse they inspire.
Through its Oral History Initiative, Hauser & Wirth Publishers is building an enduring record of artists’ voices for future generations. Additionally, the imprint publishes Ursula magazine, a biannual print and digital periodical that features essays, profiles, interviews, original portfolios, films, and photography by thought-provoking writers and artists from around the world.
Across its dedicated bookstores in the U.S. and Europe, Hauser & Wirth Publishers complements and amplifies the artist’s voice by hosting a robust slate of special programs, including talks, panels, readings, and learning initiatives that engage a variety of audiences and communities.
Publishing has been a cornerstone of Hauser & Wirth’s activity since the gallery’s founding in 1992. Its publishing activities steadily flourished through partnerships with imprints such as Hatje Cantz, JRP|Ringier, Snoeck, Steidl, Thames & Hudson, and Yale University Press before the establishment of Hauser & Wirth Publishers, with headquarters in New York and Zurich.
ABOUT HAUSER & WIRTH PUBLISHERS
reaction is difficult to understand from today’s perspective, the academy professors and a sizable portion of the Danish public were incensed by his exhibition debut, Portrait of Young Woman. The Artist’s Sister, Anna Hammershøi (fig. 1). With its muted colors, its nervous and slightly blurred brushwork, and its indefinite perspective construction, which makes it difficult for the viewer to take a fixed standpoint, the picture did not meet contemporary expectations of a painting. While he earned his classmates’ admiration, the professors at the academy withheld their approval. In conservative Denmark, Hammershøi’s pictures continued to elicit discussions in the following years as well.
Among Hammershøi’s earliest paintings, the two small-format depictions of farm buildings from 1883 already display essential characteristics of his art. In Landscape with a Barn, the building obstructs the view of the landscape (p. 52). The building extends like a wall from one edge of the picture to the other. Apart for two treetops peeking out from behind the roof and a bit of greenery in the foreground, the work is devoid of nature. As so often in Hammershøi’s pictures, the sky is gray, and neither wind nor birds animate the scene. The world appears silent and motionless. What appears at first glance as an unassuming scene confounds viewers with its radicality: in addition to the deliberate obstruction of view, the high degree of abstraction was highly unusual for the period.
The radical composition of the painting Farmhouse is also surprising (p. 53). It depicts a building whose roof and façade fill most of the pictorial field. It is unclear whether this shows a corner of the building or a flat façade: while the form of the roof along the upper edge of the painting includes a small sliver of sky that suggests there are two separate roofs, this impression is disrupted by the
fig. 1
Vilhelm Hammershøi
Portrait of Young Woman. The Artist’s Sister, Anna Hammershøi, 1885
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen
VILHELM HAMMERSHØI SILENCE
VILHELM HAMMERSHØI: SILENCE
JUNE 2024 (UK & EU)
AUGUST 2024 (US & ROW)
ENGLISH / GERMAN
SOFTCOVER
19.5 × 25.5 CM
978-3-906915-96-8
£25 / $30 / €28
Texts
by
Felix Krämer and Florian Illies
Defying categorization, the timeless paintings of nineteenth-century Danish master Vilhelm Hammershøi visually bridge the art of the Old Masters with that of the modern era. His remarkably modernist sensibility continues to capture the imaginations of contemporary audiences around the globe, with major retrospectives and exhibitions on view over the last twenty years from London to Tokyo. Accompanying the inaugural exhibition at Hauser & Wirth’s new Basel gallery, Silence offers an in-depth understanding of Hammershøi’s highly individual artistic language, encapsulated in eighteen works, all from private collections and some rarely exhibited before.
Bringing together the interior paintings for which Hammershøi is best known with farmstead paintings, cityscapes, and a rare self-portrait, Silence demonstrates the breadth and depth of the artist’s practice. The works’ quiet yet radical originality positions the artist as a powerful precursor to the modern masters who were to come. With illuminating essays by Felix Krämer, the exhibition’s curator and a leading expert on Hammershøi, and Florian Illies, art historian and bestselling author, Silence is an essential resource on the celebrated painter.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in Copenhagen in 1864, the son of a merchant, Vilhelm Hammershøi remained loyal to his hometown of Copenhagen where he lived until his death in 1916. Through early travels to the European centers of Paris and London with his wife Ida Ilsted, he familiarized himself with the rapidly evolving international art of his time. Yet, it was Dutch 17th-century genre painting, particularly the enigmatic domestic interiors of Johannes Vermeer, and of the early 19th-century Danish Golden Age, that became a well-spring of inspiration for the artist. Described by his contemporaries as a recluse, the artist preferred to paint at home rather than in a studio, resisting the influences and distractions of the outside world. Hammershøi’s interior paintings, each depiction imbued with a contemplative stillness, were to remain the artist’s enduring fascination and most renowned motif.
PHYLLIDA BARLOW
SCULPTURE 1963–2023
PHYLLIDA BARLOW: SCULPTURE, 1963–2023
OCTOBER 2024 (UK & EU)
FEBRUARY 2025 (US & ROW)
ENGLISH
HARDCOVER
23 × 25 CM
978-3-906915-93-7
£52 / $60 / €58
Text by Frances Morris. Introduction by Fiona Bradley
Phyllida Barlow: Sculpture, 1963–2023 is a comprehensive guide to Phyllida Barlow’s sculptural language, charting the progression of the artist’s extraordinary and influential career. Barlow’s restless invented forms stretch the limits of mass, volume, and height, challenging her audience into a new relationship with the sculptural object, the gallery environment, and the world beyond.
Originally published by Fruitmarket and Hatje Cantz in 2015, this major monograph begins in the 1960s and documents six decades of Barlow’s astonishing sculptures and expansive installations, including the Duveen Commission for Tate Britain (2014) and her 2015 Fruitmarket exhibition, set . It has now been expanded to include Barlow’s important exhibitions in the years that followed, among them the British Pavilion for the 2017 Venice Biennale, her work for New York’s High Line (2018), and her Schwitters-Prize-winning exhibition at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover (2022). Authored by curator Frances Morris, who has made extensive additions to her original text for this updated edition, and featuring illustrations of over 130 works, Phyllida Barlow: Sculpture, 1963–2023 is the indispensable resource on the important British sculptor.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Over a career that spanned six decades, Phyllida Barlow (1944–2023) took inspiration from her surroundings to create imposing installations that can be at once menacing and playful. Barlow’s restless invented forms stretch the limits of mass, volume and height as they block, straddle, and balance precariously. Barlow exhibited across institutions internationally, including: Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada (2023); Public Art Fund, New York NY (2023); Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany (2022); ARTIST ROOMS, Tate Modern, London, UK (2021); Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2021); The Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2019); La Biennale di Venezia, British Pavilion, Venice, Italy (2017); Duveen Commission at Tate Britain, London, UK (2014). In 2022, Barlow was awarded the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung’s Kurt Schwitters Prize.
GUSTAV METZGER: INTERVIEWS WITH HANS ULRICH OBRIST
SEPTEMBER 2024 (UK & EU)
NOVEMBER 2024 (US & ROW)
ENGLISH
HARDCOVER
17 × 23.6 CM
978-3-906915-92-0
£38 / $45 / €42
Edited by Karen Marta. Text by Gustav Metzger, interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist
A visionary artist and radical thinker, Gustav Metzger asked provocative questions about the role of the artist and of conventional forms of artmaking and display. In this richly illustrated book, Metzger tells the story of his life and work in a series of interviews with the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. He recounts his Orthodox Jewish childhood in 1930s Nuremberg and his arrival in England as part of the Kindertransport before shedding light on his development as an artist, including his early contributions to computer art, his leading role in the Destruction in Art Symposium of 1966, and his call for an ‘art strike’ from 1977–80.
An artist for our times, Metzger’s uncompromising commitment to combating environmental destruction was fundamental to his understanding of art as a vehicle for change. This publication speaks emphatically to the undimmed urgency of Metzger’s artistic position, offering an insight into his interests in ecology and nature and, in the later part of his life, the threat of extinction and the motto he adapted from W. H. Auden: ‘We must become idealists or die.’
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in Germany, Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) was an artist whose legacy is profoundly rooted in political and artistic activism. At the heart of his practice were the constantly opposing yet interdependent forces of destruction and creation. Metzger's auto-destructive art sought to provide a mirror of a social and political system that he felt was unwittingly progressing towards total obliteration. Comprehensive solo exhibitions highlight the significance of Metzger's oeuvre, presented at major institutions such as MMK Frankfurt, Germany; Serpentine Gallery, London, UK; Fundación Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico; MAC Lyon, France; and New Museum, New York NY.
EDUARDO CHILLIDA AND PILAR BELZUNCE: A MEMOIR
OCTOBER 2024 (UK & EU)
NOVEMBER 2024 (US & ROW)
ENGLISH
SOFTCOVER 15 × 23.5 CM
978-3-906915-95-1
£30 / $32 / €32
Written by Susana Chillida
Susana Chillida’s memoir, Eduardo Chillida and Pilar Belzunce: A Memoir, offers an intimate portrait of Spain’s preeminent twentieth-century sculptor, capturing Eduardo Chillida’s life, work, and family through the eyes of his daughter. Chillida’s visionary practice was wideranging, spanning small-scale sculpture, plaster work, drawing, engraving, collage, and the monumental public sculptures for which he is best known. Published to mark the centenary of the artist’s birth, Eduardo Chillida and Pilar Belzunce: A Memoir captures Chillida as both a pioneering artist and a socially engaged thinker, with Susana Chillida’s recollections and a wealth of archival images offering unprecedented insight into his and Belzunce’s universe: their family, their friendships, and the cultural circles to which they belonged.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
With a varied and pioneering practice that spans small-scale sculpture, plaster work, drawing, engraving, and collage, Spanish artist Eduardo Chillida (1924–2002) is best known for his prominent monumental public sculptures, mostly displayed in Spain, Germany, France, and the USA. Throughout his career, Chillida drew on his Spanish heritage combined with a fascination for organic form, as well as influences from European and Eastern philosophies, poetry, and history, to develop an artistic voice that communicated and resonated with a continent undergoing rapid transformation. Chillida’s contribution towards Spain’s post-war artistic reputation and his personal legacy endures through his work and also through the Foundation which he set up in 2000. In the same year, Chillida opened Chillida Leku, an exhibition space and sculpture park converted from the historic Zabalaga farmhouse in his hometown of Hernani, near San Sebastian.
Eduardo Chillida and Pilar Belzunce. A Memoir
Susana Chillida
Max Bill, preparatory study for rhythmus mit sechs bewegungen 27 February 1946, graphite on paper, 20 × 29 cm
Max Bill, preparatory study for rhythmus mit sechs bewegungen 17 March 1946, colored pencil on paper, 14 × 9 cm Max Bill, rhythmus mit sechs bewegungen 1945–46, oil on canvas, 23 × 61 cm
“My wife tells me that it was unfair of me not to tell you the price. She’s right! Well, I’m at the point where I can’t let them go—either one —for less than 150,000 French francs (because of the devaluation of the French franc).
“However, I did think you could maybe take one of the mediumsized canvases, 1 m by 1 m, or less? They’re around 20,000 francs. You can think it over and let me know. I don’t know how long you’re still going to be in Paris, maybe we could see each other again. If not, we can talk it over next time you’re in Paris. I wish you a pleasant stay here and remain sincerely yours, Kupka
“[Addition in the left margin:] As I was writing this, I thought you would remember the lunch invitation that was already extended to you, but I realize that I should nonetheless remind you about it, so that’s what I’m doing. Bring friend Vantongerloo along with you. It would be good if you can let us know in advance.”1082
The amount Kupka was asking—5,400 Swiss francs—was beyond Bill’s reach, so Fugue à deux couleurs (Amorpha) had to remain an object of desire for him.
A later letter, written by Kupka on 30 November 1945, indicates that Vantongerloo, Bill, and a third, unnamed guest had been invited to lunch by Kupka and his wife, Eugénie.1083
Might it have been Naïra who accompanied Bill and Vantongerloo on that visit to the anarchist and his wife?
After Max Bill visited František Kupka, Ernst Scheidegger (who had been taught by Bill and the photographer Hans Finsler at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich before he become Bill’s assistant) visited and photographed Kupka in Puteaux, partly thanks to Vantongerloo. Kupka’s favorite drink was red champagne and Scheidegger remembered Eugénie repeatedly going down to the cellar to fetch another bottle.1084
Vantongerloo, like Bill, admired Kupka’s work, and said so in a letter to Fritz Glarner after Kupka’s death in 1957: “You maybe already know that brave Kupka passed away in May. I held him in high esteem. He was a great artist who has not been granted the place he deserves in society; but his work is here, keeping watch.”1085
1082 František Kupka to Max Bill (c/o Georges Vantongerloo), Puteaux, 9 November 1945, Vantongerloo-Archiv.
1083 František Kupka to Max Bill (c/o Georges Vantongerloo), Puteaux, 30 November 1945, Vantongerloo-Archiv.
1084 See Scheidegger 1999, 47. 1085 Georges Vantongerloo to Fritz and Lucie Glarner, 21 July 1957, VantongerlooArchiv.
Max Bill, horizontal-vertikaldiagonal-rhythmus , 1942, oil on canvas, 160 × 80 cm Max Bill, study for horizontal-vertikaldiagonal-rhythmus 1943 (orange, black, white, violet), n. d. [ca. 1943], colored pencil on card, 30.5 × 22.5 cm Max Bill, acht-teiliger rhythmus 1942, oil on canvas, 90 × 60 cm
when it was impossible to source any other art supplies: “In these drawings the mobility of handwriting combines with the immobility of composition.”678
One of Bill’s exhibits was a particularly strong painting (dated 1942) that he named horizontal-vertikal-diagonal-rhythmus and that I personally regard as the very best of his work from the 1940s. It is a seminal work, with an asymmetrical picture plane that positively exudes energy. Despite the black structural lines cutting across color fields, this powerful painting is filled with light. And it attests to Bill’s determination that his work should contribute to progressive, constructive change.
No Swaps
In late May 1942 Max Bill sent a copy of the Allianz catalogue to Paul Klee’s widow, Lily Klee, in Bern. Having briefly acknowledged receipt of the catalogue,679 she soon made the journey to Zurich and asked Bill to give her a tour of the exhibition. It seems highly likely that Bill took that opportunity—as a good free economist—to suggest to Lily Klee that he would like to swap one of his compositions for Paul Klee’s oil painting Rhythmie herbstlicher Bäume (1920), which he wanted to give to his wife Binia as a present to celebrate the (imminent) birth of their child. However, Klee’s widow was not to be tempted. Instead she suggested that he might like to buy the painting he had in mind at a “friend’s price.”
“Dear Herr Bill, Please forgive me that I am only replying now— and in pencil. However, I live in such restless times and sometimes I have the feeling that all the stars are aligned against me and are looking menacingly down on me. . I would like to thank you, belatedly, for coming to the exhibition, despite the distance from your house, and for showing me your works, which were among the most beautiful—apart from Klee’s— that I saw in the exhibition.
With regard to your intentions concerning the painting (Bäume ), my response is as follows: I would be very happy if you in particular—as an artist trained by Klee—were to acquire this painting, because I know that you would honor it and would gain much joy and inspiration from it—only you must not sell it on. Why should bankers and money men be the ones
678 Jean [Hans] Arp to Maja Sacher-Stehlin, Grasse, 1 April 1941, Laugier 1981, 94. 679 Lily Klee to Max Bill, Bern, 4 June 1942, Bibliothek Max Bill.
NEW RELEASES
Written by Angela Thomas
CONSTRUCTIVE CLARITY: MAX BILL AND HIS TIME, 1940–1952
JULY 2024
ENGLISH
SOFTCOVER WITH DUSTJACKET
16.5 × 23.5 CM
978-3-906915-69-2
£38 / $45 / €42
Constructive Clarity: Max Bill and His Time, 1940–1952 , the second installment of art historian Angela Thomas’s multivolume biography, continues her meticulous exploration of the life and work of the influential artist. Max Bill was undoubtedly one of the most versatile artists of the twentieth century—a designer, painter, sculptor, architect, graphic designer, typographer, writer, curator, professor, and politician—who influenced generations of artists.
Picking up where the first volume left off, Thomas turns her attention to Bill’s life during World War II, exploring the ground-breaking artistic and intellectual networks to which Bill belonged: from his time at the Bauhaus in Dessau to his connections with the Parisian avant-garde and his lifelong friendship with Georges Vantongerloo. His importance as a writer, publisher, and exhibition organizer comes to the fore in this volume, as does his crucial influence on the development of Concrete art in South America and his active interest in urban planning and postwar reconstruction. In a lively cadence that speaks to Thomas’s intimate knowledge of the artist, Constructive Clarity weaves together a trove of correspondence, conversations, and numerous unpublished sources to guide readers through Bill’s life, and shed new light on the artistic, political, and personal contexts in which he worked.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Max Bill (1908–94) was a great Swiss polymath: an artist, architect, industrial designer, graphic designer, and teacher. He attended the Bauhaus where he was taught by Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Oskar Schlemmer. Bill remained closely associated with the Bauhaus school and was a key figure in developing and propagating its principles, through his professorship at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich and especially as a founder of the Ulm School of Design. Through his pursuit of a new visual language that could be understood by the senses alone, Bill defined the conventions of Swiss design for decades to come. His influence spread and was especially important in South America, where he was a catalyst for the Concrete and Neo-Concrete art movements.
Angela Thomas Constructive Clarity Max Bill and His Time 1940–1952
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Cover and back cover
Installation view, ‘Phyllida Barlow. glimpse,’ Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, 2022 © Phyllida Barlow Estate. Courtesy the Phyllida Barlow Estate and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Zak Kelley
Page 2
Hauser & Wirth Publishers Booth at Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair 2024, New York NY, 2024. Photo: Matthew Praley; Opening reception of ‘bücher 1933,’ Hauser & Wirth Publishers Headquarters. Photo: Jon Etter; Ursula Issue 10 Launch, Hauser & Wirth New York, 18th Street
Page 3
Spreads from Vilhelm Hammershøi: Silence
Page 5
Spreads from Phyllida Barlow: Sculpture, 1963–2023
Page 7
Gustav Metzger, Painting on Galvanized Steel (detail), 1958 © The Estate of Gustav Metzger and The Gustav Metzger Foundation. Photo: Damian Griffiths
Page 9
Eduardo Chillida, 1979, with his work Homenaje a Calder
Photo: Claude Gaspari
Page 11
Spreads from Constructive Clarity: Max Bill and His Time, 1940–1952
Page 13
Hauser & Wirth New York, 18th Street, 2023. Photo: Matthew Praley
ARTISTS ’ WRITINGS
BIOGRAPHIES AND HISTORIES
ARTISTS ’ BOOKS
