Katharina Duwen, Einmalig, Vielfältig, Dreispitz, Geviertelt, Fünffach, Sex, Siebensachen, Achtung Andacht, Neunzehn, 1985, Photographs, silkscreen on clothbound case, 66.5 × 51.5 × 5.5 cm, Edition of 12
Courtesy of Archivio Conz, Berlin
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Silkscreened clothbound portfolio case containing a colophon, an introduction by Daniel Spoerri (in German and Italian), and twenty-one window mat mounted photographs.
  • Photographs, silkscreen on clothbound case
  • 66.5 × 51.5 × 5.5 cm
    (26 ⅛ × 20 ¼ × 2 ⅛ inches)
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  • Katharina Duwen is a German artist and photographer. The former wife of Daniel Spoerri, she advocated for establishing the Fondazione Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri. After a period spent traveling in Europe and America, she returned to Munich in 1982, where she applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and was admitted to the painting class of Günter Fruhtrunk. That same year, Fruhtrunk tragically committed suicide, and the professorship was subsequently offered to Spoerri. Since then, Duwen and Spoerri formed a solid relationship that lasted more than a decade until their separation in 1996. Duwen’s main interest up to that time was painting; photography entered later through the traumatic experience of tuberculosis. In 1984, confined to a prolonged stay at the hospital in Gauting, she was introduced to photography by another patient, Mr. Jelinek. In the hospital’s photo lab, she engaged in the first frames and compositions made through a magnifying glass. The portfolio Einmalig, Vielfältig, Dreispitz, Geviertelt, Fünffach, Sex, Siebensachen, Achtung Andacht, Neunzehn (Unique, Multifaceted, Tricorn, Quartered, Quintuple, Sex, Seven Things, Attention Prayers, Nineteen), published by Edizioni Conz in 1985, is dedicated to this experience, as well as to Mr. Jelinek who died of the same disease shortly after. In the following years, she experimented with black-and-white and color photography in small and large formats, superimposed or modified, altered and transformed compositions. In the early 1990s, Spoerri and Duwen bought an estate on the slopes of Mount Amiata near Siena. In 1996, after extensive restoration, the Fondazione Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri in Seggiano, Italy opened, a publicly accessible sculpture park with works by artists such as Roland Topor, Erik Dietman, Karl Gerstner, Meret Oppenheim, and Bernhard Luginbühl. Among the sculptures on display is Discarica Abusiva (1997) by Duwen. Made of stone and bronze, it commemorates the relics of civilization and vestiges of the past. She has held exhibitions in several venues, including Vienna, Basel, Bern, London, and Geneva. Solo exhibitions have taken place at the gallery of Christian Aubert in Paris in 2007, the Fondazione il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri in 2016, and the Ausstellungshaus Spoerri in Hadersdorf am Kamp, Austria in 2017.

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