Anton Stankowski
The Sketchbooks
1953 to 1997
30 x 21 cm
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The
Sketchbooks
For Stankowski, the discovery of visual ideas was a process, and had less
to do with being kissed by the muse. And so training was required. His
sketchbooks are evidence of how many ideas he had, and how multifaceted
his innovative thinking was. They are one of the most important of Stankowski’s
legacies. Since the 1950s, he had been using pen, quill, and brush to
fill the “empty books” given to him by his friend, Walter
Cantz. When, in the 1980s, he withdrew from his post at his studio, they
became his visual journals. 116 sketchbooks shelter his artistic treasures;
each one contains about forty pages. Even as a student, Stankowski was
working with loose-leaf sketchbooks in a practice of visualizing thought.
He was convinced that it was possible to penetrate unknown areas through
the image, through visualized thought. In his experiments in the field
of forms, information tied to themes is not as important as the systematic.
“Systematics” was a favorite word of Stankowski — although
he knew that his ideas had to be approached with equal amounts of logic
and imagination. “Everything that is alive strives to grow, and
thereby to perfect itself.” Behind this statement is concealed a
self-portrait of Stankowski and the forces that drove his work. Yet perfection
was not the focus, but rather the search for different artistic means
for expressing content, form, and variation.
The Sketchbooks
Curators: Werner Meyer, Annett Reckert
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Anton Stankowski
Square in Circle / Sketchbook
No. 25, page 24
1979
Marker
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Anton Stankowski
Sketchbook No. 116, page 1, 1995
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Anton Stankowski
Sketchbook No. 71, page 25, 1991 |
Anton Stankowski
Sketchbook No. 71, page 26, 1991 |