Beginning with abstract expressionism, which understood itself primarily as a countermovement to constructivism and geometrical abstraction, a type of gestural-expressive painting makes a stand, for example in the works of its most significant representatives Sam Francis and Frank Stella. Another important characteristic referred to as “hard edge” emerges next in the two-dimensionality of the constructed fields of color of Leon Polk Smith, Charles Hinman, and Nicholas Krushenick. Finally, at the beginning of the 1960’s, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns gap the bridge from abstract expressionism to the materials and motifs of everyday life and thereby establish pop art. Andy Warhol’s portraits of his contemporaries and historical personalities are seen as the epitome of pop art and simultaneously make up the focal point of pop art in the HEUKING collection.
![[Translate to English:] Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, 1980, Farbserigraphie, 3-teilig, je 117 x 81 cm, Ex.: 10/90](/fileadmin/_processed_/9/a/csm_Andy_Warhol_1_1e032ee5ee.jpg)
© 2016 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Achim Kukulies <br>
<br>
Arguably the most well-known Pop artist is Andy Warhol (b. 1928 in Pittsburgh, PA, d. 1987 in New York City, NY), who was thoroughly idiosyncratic in his interpersonal communication, as Dr. Wolfgang Kühn was able to discover for himself when he was once seated next to Warhol on the occasion of a celebration at Hans Mayer’s gallery. Part of the unusual life of the extremely successful artist and graphic designer Andy Warhol was his friendship with Joseph Beuys, a Lower Rhinelander who was cut from a completely different cloth and whom Warhol admired as a great and serious artist.<br>
<br>
Portraits are one of Warhol’s preferred subjects. In addition to numerous self-portraits, there are also portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Frederick the Great and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the typical Pop art style. Popular individuals are produced as “Images” of their times according to photographs. In his portraits of Joseph Beuys, which appear in quad serial view or, as here, in full-frame, Warhol manipulates the photo as template material by ennobling the surface with diamond dust in order to augment the charisma of the celebrated German artist.
© 2016 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Achim Kukulies <br>
<br>
Arguably the most well-known Pop artist is Andy Warhol (b. 1928 in Pittsburgh, PA, d. 1987 in New York City, NY), who was thoroughly idiosyncratic in his interpersonal communication, as Dr. Wolfgang Kühn was able to discover for himself when he was once seated next to Warhol on the occasion of a celebration at Hans Mayer’s gallery. Part of the unusual life of the extremely successful artist and graphic designer Andy Warhol was his friendship with Joseph Beuys, a Lower Rhinelander who was cut from a completely different cloth and whom Warhol admired as a great and serious artist.<br>
<br>
Portraits are one of Warhol’s preferred subjects. In addition to numerous self-portraits, there are also portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Frederick the Great and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the typical Pop art style. Popular individuals are produced as “Images” of their times according to photographs. In his portraits of Joseph Beuys, which appear in quad serial view or, as here, in full-frame, Warhol manipulates the photo as template material by ennobling the surface with diamond dust in order to augment the charisma of the celebrated German artist.
© 2016 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Achim Kukulies <br>
<br>
Arguably the most well-known Pop artist is Andy Warhol (b. 1928 in Pittsburgh, PA, d. 1987 in New York City, NY), who was thoroughly idiosyncratic in his interpersonal communication, as Dr. Wolfgang Kühn was able to discover for himself when he was once seated next to Warhol on the occasion of a celebration at Hans Mayer’s gallery. Part of the unusual life of the extremely successful artist and graphic designer Andy Warhol was his friendship with Joseph Beuys, a Lower Rhinelander who was cut from a completely different cloth and whom Warhol admired as a great and serious artist.<br>
<br>
Portraits are one of Warhol’s preferred subjects. In addition to numerous self-portraits, there are also portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Frederick the Great and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the typical Pop art style. Popular individuals are produced as “Images” of their times according to photographs. In his portraits of Joseph Beuys, which appear in quad serial view or, as here, in full-frame, Warhol manipulates the photo as template material by ennobling the surface with diamond dust in order to augment the charisma of the celebrated German artist.
© artist
Photo: Achim Kukulies <br>
<br>
Charles Hinman (b. 1932 in Syracuse, New York) is an abstract minimalist painter who is known for the creation of three-dimensional pictures on canvas in the middle of the 1960s. The focus of his work is interaction with the shaped canvas and transference into three-dimensional space. He created a set of graphic artwork, which continues Josef Albers’ serial exploration of spatially operative geometric constellations. Hinman carried forward Albers’ ideas, which entailed a specific dynamic of forms and colors with highly economical use of media.
© artist
Photo: Achim Kukulies <br>
<br>
Charles Hinman (b. 1932 in Syracuse, New York) is an abstract minimalist painter who is known for the creation of three-dimensional pictures on canvas in the middle of the 1960s. The focus of his work is interaction with the shaped canvas and transference into three-dimensional space. He created a set of graphic artwork, which continues Josef Albers’ serial exploration of spatially operative geometric constellations. Hinman carried forward Albers’ ideas, which entailed a specific dynamic of forms and colors with highly economical use of media.
© artist
Photo: Achim Kukulies <br>
<br>
Fred Bull (b. 1942). Stylistically, the painting “The Statue of Liberty” points to the Memphis Group, a union of designers, architects and artists who, starting in 1980 under the leadership of Ettore Sottsass, revolutionized the most functionally oriented design up to this day. A playful interaction with architectural set pieces and intensely colored and patterned surfaces, executed in diverse materials, belong to this style.
© artist
Photo: Achim Kukulies <br>
<br>
Nicholas Krushenick (b. 1929 in New York City, NY, d. 1996 in New York City, NY) is considered an important and early representative of Pop art in close proximity to abstraction. He studied at the Hans Hofmann School of Arts. Hans Hofmann, a German, had already been teaching in the U.S. since the early 1930s and had a great impact on the development of abstract expressionism. <br>
<br>
Nicholas Krushenick is known for his paintings and virtuoso graphic reproductions, which were labeled as “Abstract Pop.” His link with Pop art is entirely structural because his works are composed using striking, mostly two-dimensional colors with black contour lines. This stylistic idiom falls under the abstract designation of Hard Edge. Patterns and ornaments in signal colors demonstrate a similarity to Roy Lichtenstein’s later work.
© artist
Photo: Achim Kukulies <br>
<br>
Bill Beckley (b. 1946 in Hamburg, Pennsylvania) is a conceptual artist and photographer.
The narrative mural/color photo “Ships passing in the night” unites visual and verbal components. Beckley has applied the photograph of the San Francisco Bay onto a wavy metal molding that serves to monumentalize the banal panoramic sea photograph. The artist transforms what appears to be a mundane and common story into an extraordinary picture.