Sabine Schaschl – författare

Constellations - On the Relationship between Color and SpaceFrom today’s perspective, Leon Polk Smith’s dynamic, geometric abstractions can be understood as a missing link in art history. His work connects the European avant-garde with the American Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s and 1950s via references to the work of Piet Mondrian. Smith’s pioneering role in the hard-edge style with its neat monochromatic fields of color as well as his shaped canvases are in turn developments that transpired from America to Europe. Departing from the rectangular canvas allowed Smith to conceive new interrelations between his sophisticated two-color compositions and the spatial context. Most notably, his unique Constellations series, created between 1967 and 1975, marks the high point of his career, and won him artistic acclaim beyond America’s borders. Alongside the early compositions from the 1940s and the multi-part shaped canvases, this book features collages, reliefs and painted objects and proposes a new reception of Smith’s decades-spanning oeuvre.

40 years of Museum Haus Konstruktiv

This new book documents a specific project within Zurich University of Art, their Masters course, that is based on experimental and project-orientated thinking as well as trans-disciplinary, individual and collaborative work. Work created in this project was featured in a public exhibition throughout the summer, 2013. It Is All in the Detail challenges the reader to get up-close-and-personal with art, to get involved. Challenging perceptions, it focuses its attention from the general to the detailed, from the conception of projects to their realisation. It is insightful and thought-provoking, contemplative of the art itself, the creative process and its meaning.

Peter Hachler (1922-99) ranks among the most revered and formerly most radical sculptors in contemporary Swiss art. Geometric rigor as well as an intuitive playfulness distinguish Hachler's work. The range of materials he used for his sculptures is another striking characteristic of his art. In the 1970s, Hachler began experimenting with industrial materials - such as concrete, plastic, cast iron, or stainless steel - creating vast works for display in public spaces, some of them conceived as art-in-architecture projects. This new monograph, published in conjunction with an exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich in autumn 2015, looks at Peter Hachler's art from today's perspective. It features nearly forty of his sculptures in photographs newly taken for this book. An essay by distinguished Swiss art historian Martino Stierli contextualises Hachler's oeuvre in postwar Swiss art, while curator Sabine Schaschl explores his life and inspirations in conversation with his widow Eva and his daughter Gabrielle.