Erich Buchholz had conceived his Berlin studio as a formally reduced, painterly and sculptural spatial ensemble in 1921/22 – the first example in Germany of an image-space situation definitely conceived as ‘space-art’. “Many people knew the space very well: Hülsenbeck, Schwitters, Hausmann, Höch, Segal, Behne, Moholy, Peri, Lissitzky, Kemeny, Kallai, Oud, Döcker”, Buchholz recollected in 1969. Buchholz’s 1922 studio at 15 Herkulesufer featured in the form of a photographic documentation (the requested replica had been cancelled at the last minute) at the ‘Great Berlin Art Exhibition’ in 1923, the very show for which El Lissitzky realized his legendary ‘Prounen Raum’. Buchholz started working on minimalistic spatial concepts again in Berlin in 1965. Buchholz was offering a German ‘response’ to the development of Minimal Art with his reduced geometrical installations in 1922/1965, or was anticipating aspects of it, but at the same time, with Lissitzky, he stands as one of the first pioneers of early Modernism in the field of constructive-concrete space concepts.
Erich Buchholz
Architekturmodell Atelier Herkulesufer 15, Berlin / model of studio space Herkulesufer 15, Berlin, 1922/1968
