Raimund Girke - Between White

Raimund Girke - Between White

A monumental monograph that explores, investigates, and offers new historical insights into the life and career of the pioneering German painter Raimund Girke (1930-2002).

Spanning 536 pages, the expansive book features essays and text by Gottfried Boehm, Dietmar Elger, Anke Hervol, Peter Iden, and Florian Illies.

Through a collection of archival materials including newspaper and magazine articles, criticism, exhibition catalogues, essays, installation images, personal photographs, and writing, this new publication traces the German artist’s rhythmic approach to painting and boundless explorations of the colour white.

In addition to the comprehensive 286 artwork plates featured in the book including works from museum and private collections, a remarkable 62-page visual essay begins in 1948 and covers every year of the artist’s life and career including photographs and scanned archival material being published for the first time.

All the book’s essays contextualise Girke’s pioneering 50-year artistic career and the important role he played in the European and international avant-garde movements after the Second World War alongside some of the most key figures in contemporary art in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Supplemented by a new in-depth biography and up-to- date exhibition history, Between White, serves as an important resource for art historians, critics, collectors, curators, galleries, students, and lovers of art around the world.

Raimund Girke: Between White is co-published in two language versions (English and German) in collaboration with the Estate Raimund Girke, KEWENIG, MER. Borgerhoff & Lamberigts, and Axel Vervoordt Gallery. The book is edited by Madeleine Girke, Sander Bortier, Luc Derycke, and Barbara Huttrop.

About the artist

Born in 1930 and living and working in Cologne and Berlin until his death in 2002, Raimund Girke was a decisive pioneer of analytical painting and counts amongst the most important positions of German painting after 1945. In the course of his artistic development, Girke repeatedly turned against prevailing trends and consistently found ways to reduce, concentrate, and evolve his pictorial language. The predominance of the colour white represents the essential constant in Girke’s work through various phases of his career.