Online conference, 20-22 May 2021

The event was hosted by the Klingspor Museum and the Offenbach Local History Museum (Haus der Stadtgeschichte). Exceptionally this year it was offered as a Zoom conference.

The speakers

Joseph Belletante, curator of the Museum of printing and graphic communication, Lyon, France // Françoise and Johannes Despalles-Strugalla, Despalles éditions, Paris (France) and Mainz (Germany) // Dr Eva Hanebutt-Benz, former director of the Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, Germany // Martyn Kramek, Book Art Museum, Łódź, Poland // Walter Raffaelli, Raffaelli editore, Rimini, Italy // Stefan Soltek, director of the Klingspor Museum, Offenbach, Germany // Christina Wildgrube, visual artist, printer, Leipzig, Germany

Programme of the online meeting

Thursday 20 May 2021

Coordination Zoom: Nina Mößle and Katja M. Schneider
Moderation Zoom: Monika Jäger and Dr. Dorothee Ader

16.30 (Central European Summer Time)
Check into the Zoom meeting

17:00
Welcome
Dr. Stefan Soltek, director of the Klingspor Museum and chair of the AEPM
Dr. Jürgen Eichenauer, director of Offenbach Local History Museum
Dr. Felix Schwenke, Mayor of the City of Offenbach
Alan Marshall, former chair of the AEPM

Filmed Introductionto the Klingspor Museum and Offenbach Local History Museum

17:30
Dr. Eva Hanebutt-Benz
The Rhine-Main-Area: A known printer’s ground along its rivers. (Eng)

18:15
Film Manroland

Open access to the filmed talks and movies at www.klingspormuseum.de

Friday 21 May 2021

Coordination Zoom: Nina Mößle und Katja M. Schneider
Moderation Zoom: Monika Jäger und Dr. Dorothee Ader

9:00 (CET)
Check-in online to the Zoom meeting

9:30
Martyn Kramek (Book Art Museum, Łódź, Poland)
Typecasting and book art in Łódź. (ENG)

2018 marked the 25th anniversary of the Book Art Museum in Łódź, renowned for its collection of contemporary book art and historical matrices for type founding. The origins of the Book Art Museum go back to the 1980’s however when it started as a private press. The talk will present the development of the Museum, focusing on its most valuable collections and the stories behind them. It will also recount the story of the recent discovery in the matrix collection of a relatively complete range of foundry matrices of a hitherto unknown typeface which had never been seen in print and which had probably never even been cast, and the story of how it was brought back to life.
Martyn Kramek is a researcher, publisher and curator who has been working with the Book Art Museum since 2004. His interests include type design and the history of the modern typography.

10:15
Francoise Despalles, Johannes Strugalla (Despalles Edition, Xylon, Mainz & Paris)
L’art et le message. La culture d’impression. (FR, ENG)

11:00
Walter Raffaelli (Rimini, Italy), assisted by Anton Würth
Offenbach – printing, editing lyric and literature (I, ENG)

What do printing and publishing poetry have in common? How do texts and images occupy the page? Walter Raffaeli offers his experience in the field as a means of illustrating the driving forces of communication through the practice of printing. Of particular interest is the dialogue which he engaged in with the copperplate printer and book artist Anton Würth. Their collaboration proved particularly successful in the rare technique of stone engraving. Both protagonists share the view that the language of the line has a direct connection to the text as a literal lineament of the language, both of which are signs of the times.
Walter Raffaeli was born 1958 in Pesaro, Italy and studied at the Scuola del Libro, Urbino. Having obtained his MA (Maestro d’Arte) he took courses in original graphic techniques at the Accademia Raffaello di Urbino. Due to his specialisation he opened his own lithographic workshop and produced his first books which have since been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1992 Raffaeli founded his own publishing house specialised in modern poetry. To date some 800 titles have been published concerning Italian and South American poetry.

12:00 – 13:30
Lunch break

14:00
Joseph Belletante (Lyon, France)
Ne pas plier / Posters and graphic design. Printed matters by Grapus. (ENG)

In 2018 and 2020 the Museum of Printing and Graphic Communication (Lyon, France) organised exhibitions of the work of the GRAPUS collective (1968-1990) and of one of its founding members, Gérard Paris-Clavel (his work since 1990). This talk will present the construction of these two different and complementary projects which represent lively forms of political graphic action which pass from the street to the workshops of artists and printers. A philosophy and an art of posters which can also influence the museum – often closed in on itself – by pushing it to open up and share its space with others by celebrating the plurality of actors involved in the printing process.
Dr Joseph Belletante is director and curator of Lyon’s Museum of Printing and Graphic Communication. His research interests include the new media and visual studies, iconology and cultural practices.

14:45
Christina Wildgrube (visual artist, Leipzig)
Making type a picture (ENG)

15:45
Coffee break

16:15
Film about the print-shop Offenbach

Phillip Hennevogel and Eckhard Gehrmann
Talk and live presentation of the lithographic press at the Haus der Stadtgeschichte (Dominik Gußmann)

17:30
Live presentation of the Klingspor MuseumDr. Stefan Soltek
Presentation of Jean Miró’s Makemono (1955). A rare scroll printed in lithography and woodcut. (ENG)

Makemono is the title of a transverse scroll, ten meters long, created by the Spanish artist Joan Miró. Executed as a lithograph, with individual passages added in woodcut, the extreme format offered Miró a unique terrain for unfolding the quasi-metabolic features of his language of form and color in never-ending imaginative abundance. On the occasion of the AEPM conference, the roll will be given to the Klingspor Museum by its owner as a permanent loan.

Open access to the filmed talks and movies at www.klingspormuseum.de

Saturday, 22 May 2021

Moderation and Coordination: Monika Jäger

11:00 (CET)
Check-in to the Zoom meeting

11:30
Printing studio of <usus>
Uta Schneider and Ulrike Stoltz
bookartists, printers, typographers, graphic artists, university-teachers, internationally most experienced promotors of the phenomenon of book as art (www.boatbook.de)

12:30
Philipp Hennevogl
Berlin at the print-workshop at Bernardbau
This well experienced artist, known for his exciting linocuts, presents his technique at the Offenbacher Druckwerkstatt, Haus der Stadtgeschichte. (www.philipp-hennevogl.de)

13:30
Lunchbreak

14.30
Movie-presentation at the Industriehalle HdS
Rainer Gerstenberg
One of the last trained type casters talks about his type foundry and shows his work.

16:00 Uhr/ 4:00 pm
Farewell: Dr. Stefan Soltek, Dr. Jürgen Eichenauer