Dictionary
Group 'Geflecht' (Meshwork)

In 1965 the Munich artists’ groups WIR and SPUR merged, and a year later, the new group was given the name GEFLECHT (Eng: network or meshwork) a title, which was intended to reflect its aims. GEFLECHT represented both the link between life and art, and an ornamental normative structure. In the group’s early years, between 1965/66, GEFLECHT members included Lothar Fischer, Heimrad Prem, Hans Matthäus Bachmayer, Reinhold Heller, Florian Köhler, Heino Naujoks, Helmut Rieger, Helmut Sturm and HP (Hans Peter) Zimmer.
The artistic positioning of GEFLECHT resulted from productive dialogue between WIR and SPUR from 1965. The group was influenced by various styles, ranging from Gothic and Baroque art, to Surrealism, as well as the work of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.
The group’s oeuvre was primarily influenced by technology and the automobile, as exemplified in the linocuts included in the first issue of the group’s journal "SPUR WIR" (1965). The design process then led to the integration of cardboard boxes, three-dimensionality, and thus to the development of the anti-object. The anti-objects -which were later executed in wood, tin and wire- were formally characterised by primarily curved, circle and spiral-shaped, brightly coloured forms, which dynamically projected outwards from their bases into space.
The anti-objects could thus be seen as a visual expression of the group’s name. The objects also appeared to be the product of a communal search for a collective form of expression, rather than the work of one individual. This idea was articulated in the Anti-Object manifesto of 1965. Unhappy with this development, Lothar Fischer and Heimrad Prem left the group in early 1966, prior to GEFLECHT’s official constitution. In 1967, the group moved into the studio GEFLECHT cellar in Munich’s Herzogstrasse, which functioned as a site for socio-political debate, and from 1968, as an exhibition space.
At this time, the group primarily produced prints, and collective work gradually assumed a less central role. In 1968, the GEFLECHT group was disbanded, although its legacy lived on in the work of the Kollektiv Herzogstrasse (1975), whose members included Heimrad Prem, Hans Matthäus Bachmayer and Helmut Sturm.