Werkmonographien

The monographs seek to provide artistic evidence and critical contextualization. Following thirty years of creative genesis, the oeuvre is analyzed and conceptually situated through exemplary individual works and core cycles.

As an experienced analyst operating from an external standpoint of observation, Bernhard Karlowitz is himself the author of these texts. The passages penned from this analytical observer-perspective are meticulously edited and composed in the third person.

His methodical distancing follows the precedent of Hans von Marées (1837–1887), who within his letters and theoretical reflections dissected his own oeuvre with forensic rigor in order to articulate a transcendent formal vision mirrored in tradition and maintained in opposition to the prevailing currents of his era. 

Artistic self-reflection thus does not merely aim to substantiate contemporary relevance and artistic evidence; it anchors itself within the artist's pursuit of form, mirrored in the epoch and rooted in the heritage of art. It connects to that historical trajectory in which—following the example of Marées—the artists of Der Blaue Reiter and other masters of Classical Modernism composed their reflections to grasp autonomous creation not only in an artistic-formal sense, but precisely from an intellectually detached perspective aligned with a transcendent formal vision.

Authentic, immediate statements by the artist are explicitly designated as such and rendered in the first person singular.

•  within the graphic and painterly evolution of the artist,
• within the contemporary context, utilizing exemplary evidence and citations that document the points and surfaces of friction between the art of Bernhard Karlowitz and his era,
• within the lineage of art history, which is traced here back to the late Bronze Age and the classical tempera works of antiquity,
• within the tradition of the conceptualization of artistic identity and the self-awareness of the artist within his time,
• reflected through the enduring studio tradition of the picture as an autonomous entity,
• within the historical trajectory of the specific techniques grounding the tempera painter,
• in the light of the liberation achieved by Modernism,
• and amidst the collapse of the painterly concept within Postmodernism—a rupture that unfolded at the exact moment Karlowitz entered academia as a figurative, classical-modern painter.

the directory of featured works and core cycles, accompanied by a brief introductory abstract. From there, you may select either the German or English language version.