BECHER, BERND AND HILLA
1931 Siegen - 2007 Rostock / 1934 Potsdam - 2015 Düsseldorf

Title: Ilseder Hütte bei Hannover (Hochofen No 5).
Date: 1984.
Technique: Vintage. Gelatin silver print.
Depiction Size: 40,5 x 31cm.
Notation: Signed and dated (verso).
Frame: Framed.


Provenance:
- Kasper König Collection, Berlin (directly from the artists)

Bernd and Hilla Becher left their mark on post-war photography with their works on industrial facilities. Through their teaching at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1976 to 1996, they trained a generation of artists who continue to shape the photography discourse today.

Documentary photography and typologies
Both artists studied at the Düsseldorf Academy, Bernd in typography and Hilla in graphic design. At the beginning of the 1960s, both focused their collaboration on the disappearing industrial architecture and continued the tradition of documentary photography in Germany. At the same time, they took up the serial approach of Minimal Art. Blast furnaces and water towers as well as half-timbered houses are photographed with strict precision and standardization. From 1966, Bernd and Hilla Becher referred to the photographs, which were often arranged in grids, as "typologies" and the buildings themselves were defined as "anonymous sculptures".

From here and the Venice Biennale
As a professor of photography, Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher taught the successful artists Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky and Candida Höfer at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1976. The special show " Von hier aus (From here)" conceived by König in the same year only presented works by the photographers in the catalog, but not in the exhibition. In 1990, 340 photographs by the artist duo were presented in the German Pavilion at the 44th Venice Biennale and both were awarded the Golden Lion for Sculpture.

The sober, matter-of-fact aesthetics of a blast furnace
"Ilseder Hütte bei Hannover (Hochofen No 5)" from 1984 was created in the same year as the Düsseldorf exhibition 'Von hier aus' by Kasper König. The gray sky, typical of the photographers, captures the nuanced dark tones of the blast furnace, whose tubes and pipes in the foreground give structure to the numerous processes.