Artist:
Günther Förg (born 1952 in Füssen, Germany; died 2013 in Freiburg, Germany).

Description:
“Günther Förg’s artistic oeuvre encompasses paintings, graphic and sculptural works as well as a great body of architectural photographs relating to such buildings as Villa Malaparte or House Wittgenstein. With distinct reference to these existing sequences, a new series about Bauhaus architecture in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv was shot in 2001. The buildings were designed in the 1930s and ’40s largely by architects who had emigrated from Europe. Their intention was to implement the social, technical, and aesthetic principles postulated by theBauhaus which had been closed down by the Nazis in 1933. Arieh Sharon, Sam Barkai, Genia Averbouch, Ze’ev Haller, Pinchas Hütt, Richard Kauffmann, Erich Mendelsohn, and others foremost endeavored to build affordable housing for the present wave of immigration —working-class housing developments, villas, studios. More than 1500 of these buildings still lend a distinct character to the cityscape of Tel Aviv today, the largest ensemble of this particular style world-wide. Günther Förg’s photographic research using a 35-mm camera and zoom lens presents the uncompromisingly modern architecture in an unembellished way, sometimes delapidated, often featuring careless renovations or additions—as monuments that have stubbornly defied the course of time, representing the unbroken spirit of a new era and the social utopias of their time.
—”Günther Förg Photographs: Bauhaus Tel Aviv – Jerusalem,” Hatje Cantz.