Author Description

Throughout his career as an artist, Jü rgen Partenheimer (*1947) has explored the possibilities of formal invention and visual narrative language on the basis of his extraordinarily rich spectrum of books. Just as essential as his numerous graphic works related to the books, and especially his drawings and texts, Partenheimer' s unique, revised and edited books have contributed to consolidating his art, which has been recognized internationally in extensive exhibitions. Partenheimer' s pictures and books, with their highly poetic quality and strict syntax of formal elements, exude a wordless silence; it is impossible to reduce them to a paraphrase. Each of Partenheimer' s books evokes reflection on how it is produced and how this relates to its content-related meaning and emotion. They represent much of what characterizes Partenheimer' s highly esteemed artist' s books: their intrinsic value as a work of art, the enormous aesthetic and qualitative awareness with which the artist accompanies all steps of their production, and the open, associative dialogue between image and text that forms the specific » space« of the book. From the very beginnings in the 1970s to his most recent books.