Carlfriedrich Claus

Carlfriedrich Claus (1930–1998) was an artist and philosopher who crossed boundaries. His work spans poetry, drawing, printmaking and the acoustic, expressing itself through language and sound. He viewed his work as a ceaseless experiment and explored the media in terms of their internal interrelationships, their origins, and their anthropological foundations and significance. Using a linear style, Claus drew his ‘language sheets’, which are both image and text and draw on various sources: Alongside Jewish mysticism, natural science and cybernetics, the artist often responded to contemporary
political events. His reflections on the philosophy of history were guided by world models striving for wholeness, ranging from Paracelsus to Marx and Ernst Bloch. Carlfriedrich Claus never made any secret of his utopian-communist outlook. His aim was to overcome alienated existence through the ‘naturalisation of humankind and the humanisation of nature’.

For a long time, Claus was artistically isolated and politically suspect in the GDR. He lived as a recluse in Annaberg, and from 1993 in Chemnitz. And yet his workshop had been a centre of gravity for European intellectual forces since the 1950s. Despite the bans, he sent his work to international exhibitions, had close connections to protagonists of concrete poetry in Western and Eastern Europe and was an exemplary authority for many independent artists in the GDR. Werner Schmidt had already purchased works by Claus for the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett at a time when the artist was still being ignored by the GDR institutions.

After 1990, his work was shown many times internationally and Claus had the opportunity to realise expansive sound and material installations. His home town of Annaberg made him an honorary citizen. After his death, the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz established the Carlfriedrich Claus Archive, which processes and preserves his estate, his library and his thousands of pieces of correspondence.

From 3 March to 3 June 2012, the Leonhardi Museum hosted the exhibition ‘Geschrieben in Nachtmeer’ by Carlfriedrich Claus. It was organised in collaboration with the Berlin Academy of Arts and the Carlfriedrich Claus Archive at the Chemnitz Art Collections, and was curated by Brigitta Milde (Chemnitz) and Matthias Flügge (Berlin). In 2011, it was on display at the Berlin Academy of Arts and at the Kunsthaus Zug (Switzerland).

The exhibition centres on the series of drawn ‘Sprachblätter’ (Language Sheets), the early photographs and the major print series ‘Aurora’, which Rudolf Mayer published in 1976 through Verlag der Kunst in Dresden.

A large-format magazine has been published to accompany the exhibition, featuring, amongst other things, a selection of the photographs published here for the first time.