Ulrich Rückriem

Schieferstein, gespalten (Hammer und Meißel), 1969

Ulrich Rückriem’s work played a key role in the context of independent directions taken by German Minimalism in the 1960. With artists like Franz Erhard Walther, Hanne Darboven, Charlotte Posenenske and Peter Roehr, Ulrich Rückriem formulated a specific further development for European Abstraction in the dialogue with classical Minimal Art of New York provenance for the German art scene at the time. Schieferstein, gespalten (Hammer und Meißel) [Slate stone, splitted (hammer and chisel)], 1969, has been presented in his first one man show at Rückriem’s stay in New York from 1968 and 1972. This work is a slab of slate cut all the way round, square in basic shape, split in two by eye and then fitted together again in the original shape. This floor sculpture already shows all the essential parameters of Rückriem’s three-dimensional thinking: reduction to the simplest geometrical forms, simple horizontal and vertical divisions, emphasis of the wholeness of the form, drawing out the qualities of the material itself.