One of the most beautiful characterizations of the printer and artist - the print artist - Hansjörg Mayer is: "Typoet". His print products of the 1960s are 'concrete typoesy'.
Born in Stuttgart in 1943, he put down professional roots in his grandfather's print shop as a child, later trained in a wide variety of printing processes and studied graphic design. By 1961, he had already made his debut as a printmaker, thus recommending himself to the internationally networked artists of concrete poetry: the "Stuttgart Group" around the philosopher Max Bense and their comrades-in-arms in Europe and overseas. Mayer's "First Alphabet" is a typographic experiment that shapes the individual letters from "a" to "z" as strict, yet playful figures on a white background according to random criteria. How letters and words relate to their surfaces of appearance becomes Mayer's central theme of the 1960s.
In the Sohm VII showcase, we present 26 sheets from three of his splendidly volI-uous, square portfolio editions from around 1965. The focus is on concrete poetry in the environment of the "Stuttgarter Gruppe," "konkrete poesie international," and Mayer's "purposeless typography."
Hansjörg Mayer's publishing and artistic work, however, goes far beyond concrete poetry; Dieter Roth's artists' books, for example, are also Mayer's work.