André Butzer's most personal book to date.
"Paintings," says André Butzer, are "localizations of the greatest despair and the greatest hope," and this is exactly why "they come closest to the very joy and aid we are in dire need of."
Being one of the most accomplished painters of his generation, Butzer has created an exceptional oeuvre over the past 30 years with unparalleled mastery. From the outset, he has merged European expressionism (Matisse) with the conceptual seriality of postwar American art (
Warhol) and reconciled the 20th-century chasm between the expressive and the ready-made in order to make painting whole once more.
Farben, Früchte, Bilder is Butzer's most personal book to date. For this lavishly designed volume, he has carefully chosen 135 paintings, created between 2021 and 2025. There is just one theme unfolding: his iconic figure of the
Woman—first on her own, then surrounded by fruit. This allows for calm and composed viewing, which grows deeper and richer from image to image. The monograph also includes an extensive conversation of the artist with art historian Christian Malycha.
Butzer's paintings offer solace and insist on human endurance in face of the frailty of our existence in almost hopeless times. With delicate echoes of Modigliani, Balthus, and Morandi, each one is unique and sincere in its genuine presence, embodying joy and affection, shyness as much as confidence, and benevolence.
Fusing European Expressionism with American popular culture, André Butzer (born 1973 in Stuttgart) has painted his way through the artistic and political extremes of the 20th century—life, death, consumption and mass entertainment—into the 21st century. With wide ranging influences including Paul Cézanne,
Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse, as well as Walt Disney and Henry Ford, Butzer has developed a unique and elaborate fictitious universe.
