Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt (8 February 1932 – 26 February 2024) was a German artist associated with

visual poetry Visual poetry is a style of poetry that incorporates graphic and visual design elements to convey its meaning. This style combines visual art and written expression to create new ways of presenting and interpreting poetry. Visual poetry focuses on ...

and

mail art Mail art, also known as postal art and correspondence art, is an artistic movement centered on sending small-scale works through the mail, postal service. It developed out of what eventually became Ray Johnson's New York Correspondence School and ...

. In 1955 she married fellow artist Robert Rehfeldt in Berlin. A collection of her work was part of the 2017

documenta 14 Documenta 14 was the fourteenth edition of the art exhibition documenta which took place in 2017 in both Kassel, Germany, its traditional home, and Athens, Greece. It was held first in Athens from 8 April to 16 July, and in Kassel from 10 Ju ...

art exhibition.

Biography

Wolf-Rehfeldt was employed as an office manager, and working as a self-taught artist under a regime of strict surveillance in the former

German Democratic Republic East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

. She turned herself into a typist—a stereotypical female job—to enable control over the content of her pages. She practiced camouflage: aptly “sterilized” and imbued with mechanic anonymity, her signs resisted alienation to broadcast free messages and to communicate openly. Wolf-Rehfeldt died in Berlin on 26 February 2024, at the age of 92.

Works

Wolf-Rehfeldt is known particularly for a period of geometric and poetic typewriter graphics art that she called "typewritings" produced between the 1970s and 1990, mostly as part of

Mail Art Mail art, also known as postal art and correspondence art, is an artistic movement centered on sending small-scale works through the mail, postal service. It developed out of what eventually became Ray Johnson's New York Correspondence School and ...

collaborations. Her work is interested in environmental issues and human rights. Mail art allowed Wolf-Rehfeldt to communicate and form networks with artists living under totalitarian regimes similar to hers during a time of international isolation. These works traveled the globe, sent as postcards from Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt in the GDR capital of Berlin to Western Europe, the Eastern Bloc, North America, Latin America, Asia, New Caledonia. No rules and no restrictions, besides formats and postage fees to ensure circulation: by distributing free artworks to a community of participants along rhizomatic routes, mail art eluded the diktats of censorship and market alike, even as they engaged with conditions of official surveillance. Kunstpostbriefe (art letters) operated as free spaces of exhibition, exchange, and personal correspondence.

References

External links

Mail Artists Index
* Doreen Mende on Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt for art agenda 2/2015
“Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt: Signs Fiction” and “HOME ARCHIVES: Paulo Bruscky & Robert Rehfeldt’s Mail Art Exchanges from East Berlin to South America”, 2015
* Anne Thurmann-Jajes: Robert Rehfeldt and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeld
Anne Thurmann-Jajes: Robert Rehfeldt and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, 2013
*https://albertinum.skd.museum/en/exhibitions/for-ruth-the-sky-in-los-angeles/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Wolf-Rehfeldt, Ruth 1932 births 2024 deaths German artists German contemporary artists People from Wurzen