KP Brehmer and Jürgen Becker | Ideale Landschaft

KP Brehmer and Jürgen Becker
Ideale Landschaft 
Berlin, Germany: Rene Block Editions, 1968
14.5 x 21.5 cm.
Edition of 750

Klaus Peter Brehmer (1938 - 1997) was a German painter, graphic artist and filmmaker, and (for the last 26 years of his life) a professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. Much of his work was about the visualization of social and political trends.

His first solo exhibition in the UK opened while were in London last fall, at Raven Row. It featured some of the smartest (and funniest) work we saw in the city. Given that most of it was produced decades and decades ago, it felt surprisingly contemporary. 

The earliest works in the exhibition were associated with the German Pop Art initiative Kapitalistischer Realismus (Capitalist Realism), which artists Brehmer, Konrad Lueg, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter developed through René Block's gallery in Berlin between 1964 and 1971, though the term originated a year prior, with a pair of exhibitions held in a disused furniture store and butcher's shop. 

Block popularized the term and produced a canvas-covered box of silkscreened prints by the above artists (as well as Wolf Vostell) titled Grafik des kapitalistischen Realismus, in 1967. 

This colour sample book followed a year later. Subtitled Colour-sample book Nr. 2, it featured 6 blockprints by Brehmer and a text in German by Jürgen Becker. 

In addition to the 'public' edition, above, there was also a larger 'museum' version produced, at a size of 55 x 61 x 3 cm. It was intended to be made in an edition of 8, though all of these were not finished, according to Block's site, here. 

For more information, visit the Raven Row site, here.