Charlotte Posenenske

🗿🔳Charlotte Posenenske (1930–1985) was a German artist associated with the minimalist movement who predominately worked in sculpture, but also produced paintings and works on paper. 

Posenenske created a series of sculptures that explored systems and structures derived from mass production and standardization.

Posenenske worked in a variety of mediums, her practice becoming more abstract through the course of the 1960s.

After early, improvised “art informal” paintings made with a palette knife or spray gun, she is 1967 and 1968 turned to industrially inspired sculptures of aluminum, steel or cardboard, whose modular components could be combined and reproduced at will.

While other artists of the period worked in multiples, where a finite edition of work could be produced, Posenenske worked in series, meaning that there was no limit to the editions. 

Her approach toward art was highly democratic. Posenenske rejected the commercial art market, offering her work for sale at its material cost. Reconstructions authorized by the artist’s estate are not replicas, and they are outwardly identical to the original prototype. Only the certificate differentiates the unsigned work from other commodities.

Poseneske stopped working as an artist in 1968, no longer believing that art could influence social behavior or draw attention to social inequalities.

She retrained as a sociologist and became a specialist in employment and industrial working practices, particularly assembly line production, until her death in 1985. During this period of self-imposed exile, Posenenske refused to visit any exhibitions and did not show her work.

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