BUHMANN, Stephanie
Frederick Kiesler. Galaxies

Frederick Kiesler (1890–1965) closely associated with members of various avant-garde art movements. He was a multidisciplinary creator who dedicated his life to exploring space and form. Kiesler’s painted compositions of the 1940s through the 1960s, which he called “Galaxies”, have long remained the least studied aspect of his work. Offering historic, intellectual, and visual context, this book provides the first in-depth analysis of these works, which comprise both single compositions and multi-panelled constellations that blur the line between painting, sculpture, and installation.

By discussing their historic, intellectual, and visual context, Stephanie Buhmann’s well-illustrated text reveals that Kiesler’s Galaxies marked a crucial aspect of his lifelong exploration of space and form and therefore must be understood as one of his most significant achievements. Furthermore, they reflect an artistic vision whose underlying ambition could not be more current. Having witnessed two world wars, Kiesler thought it crucial that his work should serve an enlightened society that was conscious of the threat of divisionism. He noted in 1966: “… we have to find ways and means to get together and live together. Separating boundaries must fall. Walls must give way to arches and portals. Hence, my paintings and sculptures and architectural units try to correlate in a continuous flow without being pinned down to a spot as if each lived in a separate prison cell.” [publisher's note]

Published by The Green Box, 2022
Monographs / Painting / Curatorial Studies