Berlinische Galerie - Museum of modern art, photography and architecture

Sketchbooks

More than 4,000 drawings and several sketchbooks by Brigitte Meier-Denninghoff have been preserved in the estate of Brigitte and Martin Matschinsky-Denninghoff.

Though the earliest sketchbook is undated, it is known to have been kept around 1948 when Meier-Denninghoff was staying with the British sculptor Henry Moore (1898–1986). Moore had carefully studied pre-Columbian figures and masks in the British Museum, which also inspired these drawings by Brigitte Meier-Denninghoff.

Another sketchbook ranges in date from 1947 to 1960. It contains numerous pencil sketches relating to sculptures she made in the 1950s, but also some early and surprisingly colourful works in watercolour and gouache. Some were drawn straight onto the notepad, while others were done on separate pieces of paper and pasted in.

The later sketchbooks from the 1960s consist mainly of pencil and fibre-tip sketches associated with sculptural works. In some of these drawings, Meier-Denninghoff captures the forms from slightly different angles, as if preparing for implementation.

Picture Archive

A photograph taken in 1954 shows Brigitte Meier-Denninghoff at a desk in her Darmstadt flat. The two press photos discernible in the background show the explosion of the Bravo hydrogen bomb detonated by the United States on Bikini Atoll on 1 March 1954, which left a devastating trail of destruction.

Along with many other illustrations from newspapers and magazines, these two photographs can be found in a previously undiscovered picture archive probably begun by the artist in the 1950s and maintained until her death. The archive is arranged on double-page spreads kept in ten folders. Meier-Denninghoff ordered the cuttings according to subjective artistic criteria. The motifs include landscape formations, recent scientific or technological findings, and records of cultural and political events. The plentiful formal and thematic references cast surprising new light on her abstract sculptures and drawings.

Nineteen double-page spreads have been selected from the first album for this interactive display.