我们是未来的画家

Hans Matthäus Bachmayer (1940–2013), Lothar Fischer (1933–2004), Reinhold Heller (1933–1993), Florian Köhler (1935–2013), Heino Naujoks (1937–2025), Heimrad Prem (1934–1978), Helmut Rieger (1931–2014), Helmut Sturm (1932–2008), HP Zimmer (1936–1992)

In 1965, the SPUR and WIR groups merged and published the magazine SPUR-WIR, which was inspired by the SPUR magazines. The magazine contained a manifesto setting out the group’s program for the next three years: ‘There will be no more paintings and sculptures.’ Instead, the artists intended to use so-called Anti-objects to break down ‘the framework of every isolated art form’ and ‘pave the way for new cultural forms.’ The ‘design of the environment itself’ was to become the content, ‘just as the design of space is the content of Anti-objects.’ This approach resulted in collaborative work processes that produced three-dimensional spatial objects, initially in wood and subsequently in iron. The artists were formally influenced by South Pacific art, particularly the Malanggan sculptures from New Ireland (Papua New Guinea) which feature layering and ornamental repetition. In 1966, they adopted the group name GEFLECHT, meaning ‘network’ or ‘interweaving’. By this time, the former SPUR artists Fischer and Prem had already left the group, as they felt their individual artistic freedom was too restricted.

It is striking that, three years after the SPUR group was excluded from the avant-garde movement, the ideas of the Situationist International (S.I.) had lost little of their influence. Building on the SPUR group’s collective experiments in 1963 which included room paintings and the SPUR-building, the artists attempted to fulfil two of the S.I.’s main demands more absolutely than ever before. These were the abolition of the artistic individual and the development of a holistic urbanism as the basis for new forms of society. Art and life should belong together and determine each other: ‘We wanted to demonstrate the potential for alternative lifestyles within a hierarchical, dogmatic society.’ (Bachmayer 2007) Shortly thereafter, the S.I. became actively involved in the 1 May protests in Paris, while the GEFLECHT artists helped organise the protests at the Munich Art Academy. At the same time, GEFLECHT was able to draw on the experiences of the WIR group, which had extensively explored with the dynamic interpenetration of space and questions about the Gesamtkunstwerk, particularly in their film.

They had contact with Paolo Marinotti, who had already financed and presented SPUR’s large-scale spatial work in his Palazzo Grassi in Venice. They hoped that this wealthy patron would enable them to create the first truly expansive environment. A spatial work was to be created in the Teatrino, a small historic theatre behind the palazzo which was rebuilt by Tadao Ando in 2013, that would eclipse everything the group had built up to that point. The model for this piece was presented in Venice in spring 1966. However, for unknown reasons, Marinotti decided against its realisation. For the current exhibition, an attempt has been made to reconstruct part of the work based on photos of the model taken at the time. A significantly smaller wall piece, which still exists today in a residential building near Munich, served as an important reference point for the artists’ unique construction technique, which made extensive use of optical illusions and did not develop all spatial elements in three dimensions. The tension between illusion and concrete three-dimensional form was actively sought. The aim was for a new artistic phenomenon of a supra-spatial nature to emerge between the illusory space created by the overlapping colour strips and the real space. For the first time, it is now possible to gain an insight of how the artists envisioned expending their concept into a walk-in painting. The Anti-object becomes an environment in which swathes of colour on the floor, ceiling, and walls are intended to form an overarching spatial continuum.

Following political activities during the aforementioned protests at the Munich Art Academy in 1967/68, the group disbanded in 1968. Many of the artists involved cease their artistic practice for several years.

Erwin Eisch (1927–2022), Gretel Stadler (1937–2022), Max Strack (*1934)

The first SPUR manifesto, with its defining statement ‘We are the painters of the future!’, was also signed by the painter Erwin Eisch and the sculptor Gretel Stadler. Both belonged to the SPUR group and had been members of the Situationist International (S.I.) since 1959. When gallery owner Otto van de Loo planned the first SPUR exhibition for September, he invited only Fischer, Prem, Sturm, and Zimmer. The disinvited artists decided to form their own group together with the sculptor Max Strack. They called themselves RADAMA, derived from the Bavarian ‘Ramadama’ (which means ‘we clean up’), a slogan used in 1949 to encourage the people of Munich to clear away the rubble left behind by the war. Like ‘Only we can de-rubble the world’ from the SPUR manifesto of 1958, the group’s name RADAMA evokes the devasting destruction of the city by the war, and at the same time conveys the desire to use the resulting gaps for a progressive redesign, also in a figurative sense. It is interesting to note that the artists of RADAMA never attributed their works to individual artists, although they were not created collectively. In contrast to SPUR, individual artistic production was thus completely subordinated to the group.
At the beginning of 1961, RADAMA planned a three-part exhibition in which almost exclusively the same works were to be shown, each with a completely different character. This approach was revolutionary in the history of exhibitions at the time. But the major scandal, which was reported in newspapers in Germany, was triggered by something else: RADAMA had invited visitors to a memorial exhibition for the deceased painter Bolus Krim, with black crepe, devotional pictures, funeral wreaths, candles, and dark velvet. However, a journalist quickly revealed that Bolus Krim was a fictional character and accused the artists of wanting to gain a market advantage by exploiting the legend of the artist who was traumatized by war and died young.
Despite all the media insults, RADAMA managed to open the second part of the exhibition. Entitled Art and Living Space, it was given a completely new look (see photographs on the wall). Now the principle of exhibiting itself was turned on its head. Paintings no longer hung on the walls, but were placed slopingly in the room or used as carpet replacements and as bases for chairs and other furniture on the floor. Sculptures served as stands for typewriters or sheet music. In this way the group satirised the misuse of art as decoration for bourgeois living rooms. Instead, life should literally take place in and with art. The Situationists’ demand to abolish the separation between art and life was central for this environement. Art was allowed to be a disturbance and a stumbling block as well as a toy or an object of entertainment. It had outlived its usefulness as a noble, venerable aesthetic object. To emphasise the installative, all-connecting character, warp threads were stretched between the individual objects labelled with words such as ‘entertainment’, ‘spaces & education’, ‘painted content’, ‘comfort’, ‘ivory tower’, and ‘image exploitation’. The threads converged on a plaster object, the so-called Electron brain. An all-determining centre, which, however – unlike to the first computers developed at the time – had the opposite effect of order, predictability, and repeatability. ‘Art and Living Space’ was the first environment in Germany to be created under the influence of S.I..

Lothar Fischer (1933–2004), Heimrad Prem (1934–1978), Helmut Sturm (1932–2008), HP Zimmer (1936–1992)

In 1957, a group of students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, who were unhappy with the conditions there, formed a group. The first exhibition under the name SPUR (which means track, trace or trail) took place in 1958. In the period that followed, Lothar Fischer, Heimrad Prem, Helmut Sturm and HP Zimmer emerged as the four protagonists, later joined by the revolutionary Dieter Kunzelmann. In 1959, they joined what was probably the most influential European post-war avant-garde group, the Situationist International (S.I.), around the filmmaker and thinker Guy Debord and the Danish painter and co-founder of the legendary CoBrA group Asger Jorn. It was at this point, if not before, that the focus broadened to include a socio-political agenda. Between 1960 and 1961, the group also published a magazine that they distributed in pubs. The sixth issue was confiscated and the artists were tried for pornography and blasphemy.
What distinguished SPUR from many of the other groups and exhibition collectives that emerged at the same time was that it was not just about exchanging ideas on artistic issues and improving chances in the art market; rather, inspired by Asger Jorn and his experiments during the CoBrA period, it was about developing a group style together and, building on this, actually working together on the same surface.
Initially, the focus was on the spontaneous painting process, as in 1959 with the Italian painter and S.I. co-founder Pinot Gallizio in the painting Dérive (see the documents on the table). This was followed by a number of duo works by individual SPUR artists, before all the major collaborative works were produced in 1963. By this time, SPUR was no longer a member of the S.I., but the influence of their ideas for the radical transformation of urban space as a basis for social change is strongly felt here. For example, they painted a 20-metre-long hall for an exhibition in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, then owned by the Italian industrialist, collector and exhibition maker Paolo Marinotti. Marinotti himself and the artists’ wives contributed to some of the murals (see the documents on the table).
The group went one step further with the so-called SPUR-Building, a model of a cultural centre, also created in 1963 (see reproductions of SPUR-Building on the wall). Commissioned for the Troisième Biennale de Paris (France), which was dedicated to the theme of ‘Nouveaux Espaces’, the aim was to design a building that would not only fulfil functions such as theatre, sculpture park, exhibition hall, etc., but would also offer a ‘total experience’. It is the utopian idea of creating a place that offers space for social change.
In 1965, the so-called Malspiel (painting game, see the facsimile on the table) was one of the last joint actions of the SPUR group. The artists sat around a table and worked in quick succession on small sheets of paper, which they then passed on to the next artist. When the sheet was returned to the member who had started it, the artist could either sign it or continue according to the same rules. This was not about some grand utopia, but about expanding one’s possibilities at a time when the emergence of Pop Art was unsettling the artists and the group’s energy was waning. In at least one round, the artists of the WIR group joined the Malspiel. Now the game was a way of testing each other and seeing how far they could go in forming a group.

Hans Matthäus Bachmayer (1940–2013), Reinhold Heller (1933–1993), Florian Köhler (1935–2013), Heino Naujoks (1937–2025), Helmut Rieger (1931–2014)
Impressed by the anarchic activities of the SPUR artists, whom they had met at the academy, Helmut Rieger, Florian Köhler and Heino Naujoks also wanted to form a group. Initially, they were united by the desire to exchange ideas and to help each other with artistic questions. Later, they gave themselves the name WIR (which means ‘we’).

Around 1960, the so-called facet style, which also characterised the work of the SPUR group at the same time, developed for the first time in a way that transcended the group. It reflects essential features of Cubism, namely the figure/scene divided into different perspectives (see the ink drawings on the other side of this wall). At the same time, the all-over, which can be seen in Baroque ceiling frescoes as well as in Jackson Pollock’s work, is formative.

Together the WIR artists – as well as the SPUR group – visited many baroque churches and monasteries in the area. In 1961 the group was joined by Reinhold Heller, who enthusiastically took up Rieger’s idea of making a film about Baroque space. In the same year, filming began in several churches, mainly at night. It was during this phase that the sculptor Hans Matthäus Bachmayer finally joined the group. He strengthened the theoretical aspect of the group discussions: ‘When we got to know each other in the WIR group, […] the moment of wholeness, the so-called totality in art, played a central role.’ (Bachmayer 2000) In the spring of 1962, the final shots for the film were taken, before it was edited into a 27-minute black and white silent film (with a live recording of Alexander Scriabin’s 5th Piano Sonata at the 1987 premiere). They experimented with extreme light-dark effects. Playing with detailed shots of Baroque church sculpture is also one of the film’s central motifs. The Baroque splendour, which is usually achieved through coloured stucco, gold and frames, is neutralised by a clear black and white aesthetic. In its place comes the composition and design of the ensembles of figures, their arrangement in relation to each other and in space. ‘What is the position of the figure in space?’ seems to be the question posed by the film, which is designed to be beyond all documentary pretensions. The aim was to use very unusual and varied camera angles to transfer the ‘unclarification’ of space – which was achieved at the same time in painting with the facetted style – to the cinematic medium. Although utopian socio-political considerations did not initially play a role in the WIR group, the film shows how they also attempted to extend painting into space.

With the exception of Reinhold Heller, who had been working as an art teacher since 1960, the other WIR artists did not complete their education at the Academy until 1963. Their time as a group therefore largly coincided with their time at the Academy. This is why, in contrast to the SPUR group, the WIR group was much less represented in exhibitions and did not yet have its own gallery at the time. Nevertheless, there were repeated joint presentations with the SPUR group at exhibitions organised by artists’ associations. At one of these exhibitions, in the spring of 1965, the two groups’ contributions were hung side by side for the first time. The exchange intensified, not least because the SPUR group felt exhausted and was interested in new possibilities for exchange. After a joint painting game with the SPUR group (see the table in the SPUR group exhibition area), the collaboration intensified, leading to the publication of the magazine SPUR-WIR and the first joint works. The portrait photographs from 1965, taken in the style of police mug shots, already point to the influence of the SPUR group and the politicisation associated with it.

Lisa Endriß (*1947), Lilith Lichtenberg (*1943), Alrun Prünster Soares (*1942), Sara Rogenhofer (*1950), Ursula Strauch-Sachs (1941-2015)

When the Kollektiv Herzogstraße created their Walk-in Painting in 1980, large-format paintings by the WeibsBilder group were exhibited next to it in the same old Munich factory. In 1977, five female painters, including Ursula Strauch-Sachs from Kollektiv Herzogstraße, formed an all-female group. They named themselves ‘malgruppe WeibsBilder’, which is a somewhat crude Bavarian term meaning ‘women’s images’, composed of the words ‘Weib’ for ‘woman’ and ‘Bild’ for ‘image’ or ‘painting’. Their aim was to counter the dominance of male artists and their cult of genius with alternative forms of cooperation.

The 1968 movement, in which group work played a decisive role, was an important prerequisite here, too. Some of the later WeibsBilder artists knew each other from feminist or theoretical discussion groups, from activities relating the so-called ‘Akademiegarten’, the first self-organised kindergarten at the Munich Art Academy, and from the Kinderforum van de Loo founded in 1970 (see third floor).
In the early years of the WeibsBilder collaboration, they pursued the search for a specifically female imagination using relatively abstract means. It was only once a collective style had developed over the years that figurative painting became possible. This was a significant development in Munich’s long history of group art. The decisive factors were more differentiated, equal communication, precise listening, and mutual responsiveness. The communicative play that characterized the Kollektiv Herzogstraße’s collaboration was further developed and refined.

This is evident from the outset in the titles of the paintings, which offer an additional layer of interpretation. Feminist themes, among others, are addressed here with laconic irony and detachment. For instance, the silhouette of a woman emerging from a painting as an unpainted primed canvas is described as a ‘white spot on the map’, alluding to the unknown and untapped potential of the feminine.

In 1980, the film Und immer lockt das WeibsBild (And Always the WeibsBild Lures) was made in the immediate vicinity of the installation Begehbare Malerei (Walk-in Painting) by Kollektiv Herzogstraße. The title here also ironically refers to the prevalent image at the time, which reduced women to objects for men.

In the film, as in Kollektiv Herzogstraße’s work, the panel painting is blown up. The artists of WeibsBilder put it like this: ‘Sometimes we get up close to the paintings, transform ourselves into them and become plastic pictorial elements. Subject and object merge in a fusion of colour and form until we disappear from the painting surface and reappear as coloured figures in space and on the street […]’. The artists paint each other into the canvas, becoming pictorial figures who leave the painting and invade urban spaces. Like the groups before them, they seek to extend art into everyday life.

Without the megalomania that characterised the ideas of Situationist Guy Debord, the women succeeded in developing a shared utopia, particularly within their own community. In terms of social interaction, mutual solidarity, resistance to corrosive market mechanisms and collective action — despite the serious nature of these themes, they should always be joyful and fun — the WeibsBilder group was certainly a model for real social change.

Fan Bo, Liu Ke and Zhou Li

The “BOXES Group,” jointly formed by three artists, is a unique artistic collective gradually shaped through their close collaboration in operating the Boxes Art Museum. Characterized by multi-media integration and cross-disciplinary exploration, they translate their experience in museum operation into artistic practice, creating works that blend social observation with aesthetic experimentation. Through collaborative art creation, joint curation, and residency programs, BOXES Group seeks to transcend individual creative boundaries, presenting diverse artistic languages—spanning painting, installation, and video in their exhibitions. Their cooperative model and creative output underscore the value of collaborative practice in contemporary artistic exploration.

Zhou Li, Fan Bo and Liu Ke who draw inspiration from the diverse possibilities and methods of artistic collaboration took on the challenges and potential of the collective artistic process. As the late artist Heimrad Prem put it, the aim was to give the world a gift through communicative play and free painting, and to liberate it from its isolation.
The artists did not work simultaneously on the same pictural surface, but rather one after the other. Each of them submitted their own artistic proposal. In a kind of castling move or the Malspiel (painting game) by SPUR, these paintings were then exchanged between the artists’ studios. The artists were asked to engage with and respond to them. This is courageous because Fan Bo, Zhou Li, and Liu Ke are opening up to each other and putting their visual language up for discussion.
They adopt the Situationist method of “détournement.” Translated literally from French, it means “diversion” or “kidnapping.” In Situationism, it refers to the transformation of existing material, as Asger Jorn did when he bought pictures at flea markets to paint over them.

You can now search for the artists’ individual styles in their work. Alongside the collaborative pieces, individual works by the participating artists are also on display. For the SPUR artist group, painting together was already a “productive disruptive factor.” Similar to experiencing a foreign environment, interacting with artists from different cultures, or adapting new artistic techniques, painting together can also establish a new trace that can be further developed.

Michael Gene Aichner (*1975), Karina Bugayova (*1987), Daniel Geiger (*1986), Gonghong Huang (*1963), Oleksiy Koval (*1979), Kuros Nekouian (*1957), Thomas Rieger (*1996), Stefan Schessl (*1967), Veronika Wenger (*1967), Pascal Worsch (*1987), Michael Wright (*1955)
The Beautiful Formula Collective (BFC) is about painting and creating collective art works based on the Beautiful Formula Language. They combine spontaneity, improvisation with the logic of rhythm, which gives them structure and rules while painting. The Beautiful Formula Collective produces and stages group works not only in the studio, but also as a live painting performance in front of the public.

Although the collective, founded in Munich in 2012, has no direct connection to the other artist groups presented so far, its focus is the same as theirs: collaborative painting on the same surface, which is perhaps the greatest challenge in this field. While the other groups have intuitively found a common visual language that enables a collective painting process, the BFC has also developed this language on a theoretical level. Based on a logical yet open system, BFC artists are able to write compositions that are then executed as paintings. These compositions usually determine the location, intensity, and duration of a single painting action. Spontaneous and reflexive reactions to the individual compositional guidelines can and should occur. The common language is intended to be an aid, to prevent Babylonian confusion, but it is not an immutable law: „We have compositions, which are kinds of traffic regulations to avoid accidents, but everyone is allowed to break the law for the love of the completed painting. You run a red light when you have to catch a bus.“ (Oleksiy Koval 2022) .

Time and again, BFC artists break down genre boundaries by expanding their painting activities to include musical or dance elements. They collaborate with the US saxophonist Steve Coleman and the Ukrainian dancer Alina Sokulska, who lives in Spain. In live painting performances, as in jazz, the aim is to improvise together on the basis of a composition and to follow each other’s cues. At the same time, Sokulska works with the Beautiful Formula Language in her choreography The book of sand, Madrid 2024, which she in turn translates into dance movements.

Artistic boundaries are overcome through BFC’s group collaboration. Each member is encouraged to contribute their personal history to the collaborative process. At the same time, however, they are forced to abandon their own well-trodden paths and take risks. Linguistic, cultural, social, and generational boundaries are also overcome, and—in keeping with the spirit of historical artist groups—art is expanded into a social sphere.

Daniel Geiger (*1986), Oleksiy Koval (*1979), Thomas Rieger (*1996), Veronika Wenger (*1967) together with Ai Hao, Chen Zemin, Chen Zekun, Chen Zheneng, Gao Jinyang, Guan Ziqing, Guo Jian, Huang Zile, Shen Xinlei, Wu Yiqing, Xiao Leyi, Xu Boxuan, Yang Guang, Yang Xinyu, Yang Xueting, You Simai, Zou Yanxi

At the beginning of 2023, the Beautiful Formula Syndicate staged its first event at GAFA in Guangzhou. Oleksiy Koval and Veronika Wenger organised a workshop together with artists and students from the art academy, followed by joint painting sessions. For the exhibition We are the painters of the future we were able to build on this experience. In the run-up to the opening, artists and students from the GAFA were invited to collaborate once again with artists from the Beautiful Formula Collective (BFC), now including Daniel Geiger and Thomas Rieger as well as Wenger and Koval. The process of painting the large-scale wall piece was documented.

The advantage of the Beautiful Formula Language is that it allows the group context to be expanded for specific actions. While the SPUR group’s large wall painting was open only to the artists’ wives and the financing collector, projects by the Beautiful Formula Syndicate can be open to everyone. The group is much more flexible than the historical collectives exhibited here, based on the shared language, which is relatively easy to grasp.

The socio-political aspect mentioned previously in relation to BFC – the overcoming of linguistic, cultural and social boundaries – becomes a reality once again here. As with music, rhythm brings different people together in painting, offering a form of artistic expression that would be difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to achieve alone.

Since 2012, the BFC artists have been carrying out painting projects worldwide as the Beautiful Formula Syndicate. These projects have taken place not only in Guangzhou and Germany, but also in Turkey, Iran, and Georgia.

Founded by Otto van de Loo (1924–2016) and Gerlach Bommersheim (1934–2006), Alrun Prünster Soares (*1942), Ursula Strauch-Sachs (1941–2015), Dieter Strauch (*1940), Helmut Sturm (1932–2008), Heinz Weld (1943–2024); led today by Alrun Prünster Soares (*1942), Lilith Lichtenberg (*1943), Heribert Heindl (*1965), Monika Kapfer (*1970), Annabelle Mehraein (*1974), Madalena Soares (*1939), Valio Tchenkov (*1966), Fabian Vogl (*1978)
Founded in 1970, the Kinderforum van de Loo (Children’s Forum van de Loo) played an important role in the genealogy of Munich’s groups. In the 1960s, when painting was frowned upon, many artists gave up painting to become politically active. As the revolution wound down, people were looking for ways to implement their newly developed ideas in the social sphere. A painting studio for children offered the chance to influence the future of society while also returning to artistic work. For many Munich-based artists influenced by CoBrA and Asger Jorn, children’s art was also an important source of inspiration. In 1970, when gallery owner Otto van de Loo wanted to close or convert his so-called Forum Galerie, a second gallery space which was dedicated to more performative art forms, in 1970, he developed the idea of a Kinderforum van de Loo together with former SPUR artist Helmut Sturm. Sturm quickly found allies in Ursula Strauch-Sachs, Dieter Strauch, and Heinz Weld, with whom he would found a new artist group, KOLLEKTIV HERZOGSTRASSE, five years later. Shortly afterwards, Ursula Strauch Sachs, Lilith Lichtenberg and Alrun Prünster Soares from the Kinderforum established the WeibsBilder group together with Lisa Endriß and Sara Rogenhofer. The Kinderforum van de Loo was therefore an important place not only for the children, who were encouraged to develop as freely as possible, but also for the artists, who inspired each other to form new groups.
The Kinderforum van de Loo still exists today. Generations of children and young people have found and continue to find here a constant reference group here. This group remains intact for many years, providing stability alongside families that do not always remain together in their original form and outside a school system characterised by pressure and many changes. At the same time, the Kinderforum aims to allow children to develop freely and independently, try out a wide variety of things, and practise social behaviour. The focus is not on the artistic results or aesthetic guidelines, but on strengthening children’s confidence in their own perspective on the world. This principle is illustrated by the following story recounted by a former Kinderforum child in 2017: “A boy wanted to draw a fish, but thought it looked like a hand and was quite upset about it. His supervisor Alrun said to him, ‘Then it’s a hand fish.’ But the boy replied, ‘A hand fish? There’s no such thing. And Alrun simply replied, ‘Yes, you just invented it! Now there is a hand fish.’
For the exhibition We are the painters of the future, various groups from the Kinderforum van de Loos have once again collaborated on a large joint project, similar to last year’s exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (see the photos on the wall). By painting together on a four-meter-long canvas, they gained experience similar to that passed down to them by the group artists before them. You learn to accept it when your favourite parts suddenly disappear. You learn to be open to new ideas and ways of expressing yourself. You learn to discuss what is being created with each other. In the process, you develop yourself further and perhaps become a little more grounded in a world that constantly demands that you be the the best, the fastest and the most assertive. The strip of small-format photographs on the wall provides further insights into the day-to-day work on site.

Cai Suo (*1979), Liu Hao (*1974), Zi Zai (*1976)

Founded in September 2017 as an extension of the Xisan Film Studio, the Xisan Chorus passes the mic to the individuals concerned, connecting practitioners involved in relevant events. They emphasise a participatory mode of expression, amplifying authentic voices as a chorus. They have consistently expressed themselves in this manner, stating: “If we regard films as circulated ‘messages’ within Xisan Village, the choir attempts to translate ‘voices’ into circulated ‘songs.’ Facing the realities of Xisan, we act and sing together!”

Though paintings appear in the Xisan Chorus’ exhibition space, juxtaposed with installations, the artists’ creative core is rooted in their encounters with real specific individuals during fieldwork. They employ diverse forms such as music, video, installation, and participatory art. Like the other artists in this exhibition, Xisan Chorus shows no interest in perfect, polished surfaces. There is a consistent unfinished quality to their works, whether in the sonic textures of their music, the visual grain of their videos, or the material presence of their installations. These raw expressions contrast starkly with the glossy urban illusions of a rapidly developing society (where inflated urban spaces often become grandiose symbols of economic prosperity). Xisan Chorus remains open to individuals from all backgrounds: they particularly welcome and listen to the voices of children and educationally marginalized groups. This ethos resonates with artists such as the SPUR group—who, during Germany’s 1960s “Economic Miracle,” used formal language to resist aesthetic polish and superficial beauty while persistently engaging with socio-political issues.

Hans Matthäus Bachmayer (1940-2013), Renate Bachmayer [Rânebach] (*1940), Dietrich Bartscht (*1951), Jutta von Busse (1952-2013), Heiko Herrmann (*1953), Thomas Niggl (*1939), Heimrad Prem (1934-1978), Armin Saub (*1939), Ursula Strauch-Sachs (1941-2015), Dieter Strauch [Diri] (*1940), Helmut Sturm (1932-2008), Heinz Weld (1943-2024)

Against the backdrop of the lessons learned from the 1968 revolution, the Kollektiv Herzogstraße formed in Munich in the mid-1970s. Unlike previous all-male groups, this collective included three female painters for the first time.

Like its predecessors, the collective was explicitly influenced by the avant-garde Situationist International (S.I.) movement. This is evident in the quote from S.I. founder Guy Debord that opens the collective’s magazine, published in 1976: ‘In a society where no one can be recognized by others, every individual becomes incapable of recognizing his own reality.’

For the Munich artists the group was a counter-model in the form of an ‘intermediate public sphere’ providing a space in which to experiment with social interaction: ‘Shared experiences in relationships, in thinking, in practical action, and in the construction of situations are the prerequisites for unleashing social imagination.’ (KH 1977). These collective practices were tested in everyday life, whether in the shared studio in Munich or during stays at the Swedish farm Drakabygget, where Asger Jorn’s brother Jørgen Nash had established a Bauhaus Situationniste. While some painted, others cooked, and vice versa. The proceeds from the sale of the paintings created at that time are still divided among the participants, regardless of who was involved or how they were signed. The connection between art and life, which was particularly demanded by the S.I., was realised here.
In terms of collaborative painting on a single pictural surface, the Kollektiv Herzogstraße drew on the SPUR group’s experiments such as Dérive or Malspiel (painting game). Unlike the works of GEFLECHT or SPUR’s large group works, there were no formal guidelines. Instead, the focus was on spontaneity and the free painting process. Time and again, there was an element of destruction: ‘Our painting is destructive in the sense that it destroys itself through its own ugliness. Our paintings are primarily an expression of collaborative work.’ In 1977, Heimrad Prem described this process: ‘The individual must come to terms with the fact that he cannot assert himself. But he can paint alongside others. He can express himself, but he must know that his expression will be challenged […]. For those involved, their collaboration also embodies a communicative game that forces the individual to think in boarder terms and prevents them from becoming fixated on details. […] If we were to succeed in realising a joint painting (by ‘realising’ I mean more than just attempting and then giving up), then we would be giving the world a gift […]. Painting would be freed from its isolation.’

The expansion of group painting into space demonstrates this achievement. In 1980, artists from the Kollektiv Herzogstraße created two large installations, including Begehbare Malerei (Walk-in Painting) in an old factory building in Munich. Similar to GEFLECHT’s Ambiente, but much freer in form, ‘the visitor is invited to enter the painting and its layers in order to experience the painting process from a variety of perspectives […] in the middle of the ‘belly of the painting’’. (Armin Saub 1986)
After achieving this success, the collective disbanded in 1982 without benefiting from the long-overdue rediscovery of painting in the 1980s.

Walter Amann (*1942), Wolfgang Schikora (*1945), Ulrich Zierold (*1946)

The King Kong Kunstkabinett (King Kong Art Cabinet) was established in the same year that malgruppe WeibsBilder was founded, in 1977. Like WeibsBilder, its members met during the student protests in organisations such as Kritisches Atelier (Critical Studio) at the Munich Art Academy. Consequently, they abandoned painting for several years in favour of political and social activities. Through the group, the three painters, like the other Munich group artists, eventually found their way back to expressive figurative painting. In May 1968, Asger Jorn, an important role model through his painting and the CoBrA group, struck the right note in Paris with his slogan ‘No power to the imagination without powerful images.’

The artists of the King Kong Kunstkabinett have a similar approach to painting to that of the WeibsBilder group. They also started with abstract gestures before progressing to figurative painting more quickly than their female counterparts. This was made possible by a collective style and intensive communication among the artists.

Unlike the other groups, the artists of King Kong Kunstkabinett do not produce individual works alongside their collaborative pieces. Since 1977, they have exclusively created collective works, either by Ulrich Zierold painting in Frankfurt and the other two artists finishing the paintings in Munich, or by all three artists painting simultaneously during joint studio days. The work process usually proceeds as follows: During the initial, abstract-expressive phase of the painting process, all three artists can work on the same surface. In the next steps, which give concrete form to the picture themes, there is initially a lot of discussion before the individual artists execute their respective sections of the painting. They usually work on several pieces at the same time to keep everyone busy, switching between them.

As well as magazines, collages, comics and small sculptures, film is the main medium .

As with painting, the aim is not to create a perfectly smooth surface, but rather to maintain an open, playful form in which the collage and the discontinuities of the various elements remain visible. The artists use film and painting to process the sensory and informational overload that has affected us increasingly since the triumph of mass media. ‘Our images are found and collected (like ragpickers), and then assembled. We find the image ideas and themes in the abundance of floating, media-processed image worlds of the surface, politics, and the ‘sensational culture of the ordinary.’’ (KKK 2019) References to reality are always subordinated to the primacy of experimentation and imagination: ‘The [only] thing that is realistic is the unsparing gaze. It is not depicted, but redirected.’ (KKK 2019)

With their clear commitment to collectivity, Amann, Schikora, and Zierold reject the still widespread typology of the artistic genius. However, they surpass their predecessors SPUR, WIR, RADAMA, GEFLECHT, and Kollektiv Herzogstraße by adopting an ironic and critical stance towards themselves. This unpretentious self-reflection is evident in many of their paintings and films, and is also reflected in the group’s name, which references the fictional giant ape King Kong — a character that has thrilled audiences worldwide in various film adaptations since 1933.