Line, Resistance, Memory – The Early Printmaking of Andre Schmidt
On an artistic beginning shaped by the search for expression and a conscious stance against violence.
Looking back today at the early prints by Andre Schmidt – some archived at es-ist-kunst.de – one immediately senses that these works are more than studies or technical exercises. What unfolds here is a formative artistic body shaped by the intensive atmosphere of the Musisches Zentrum at Ruhr University Bochum, and by a deeply rooted ethical conviction: the will to confront war, violence, and inner paralysis through the means of art.
Selection from the Catalogue of Works
A Studio as a Space of Thought
“I wanted to make a statement against war,” says Andre Schmidt, reflecting on his decision to engage seriously with painting and printmaking. It was through the Musisches Zentrum at RUB that he came into contact with the print studio – an oasis of experimental learning led by Ortrud Kabus. An artist and art educator trained in biology, art history, and painting, Kabus later became acting director of the Visual Arts Department at the Centre. She provided not only a technical foundation in drypoint and etching, but also a spiritual home that fostered personal expression and open inquiry.
“I spent many hours in the studio – observing, trying, abandoning ideas. It was a space where thinking flowed through the hand,” Schmidt recalls.
The Line as Resistance
The early works frequently display bold, intuitive lines – sometimes figurative, at other times verging on abstraction. The resistance of the plate against the tool – so characteristic of the drypoint technique – remains visibly inscribed in the images. These are lines that must assert themselves. “I instinctively sensed that printmaking involves a kind of positive violence – a form shaped through friction. That may have been what drew me to it,” Schmidt reflects.
Many sheets from this period embody precisely this tension: between impulse and control, between intuition and craft. One finds fragments of nature, urban signs, bodily forms – often in transitional states. The graphic language remains reduced: no explosions of colour, no illustrative gestures – just line, surface, shadow.
The Influence of Others
In addition to Kabus’ teaching, it was the exchange with fellow artists in the studio that deeply shaped Schmidt. “There was a monastic discipline about it,” he recalls. “People came to art with serious questions – and that carried me.” The interaction with experienced graphic artists and painters, whose studios were nearby, sharpened his sensitivity to proportion, rhythm, and above all: silence in the image.
What emerged in this context was not only a craft-based foundation, but also an artistic ethos that continues to inform his work: art as a contemplative counterpoint to sensory overload, as a space of condensation, as an invitation to deceleration.
Traces in the Archive
The website es-ist-kunst.de preserves a number of these early works. (Additional pieces await digitisation for this exhibition) The site is deliberately restrained in design: white surfaces, small previews, simple navigation. It is intentionally never modernised. It is an artefact – created for Extraschicht 2010. “It is an inventory of artistic activity around the printmaking studio of the Musisches Zentrum,” Schmidt explains.
The sheets shown there feel like fragments retrieved from an intense phase of development. Some already suggest later themes – axes of light, vegetal spaces, abstract symbols – yet they remain graphically disciplined. The line takes precedence – never the narration.
A Work in Becoming
Today, many years on, Andre Schmidt is primarily known for his painting. Yet the roots in printmaking remain evident. “I learnt to work within limitation. One tool, few colours, only what’s necessary.” This aesthetic reduction, coupled with an ethical disposition, may be the most enduring legacy of that studio under the roof of the Musisches Zentrum.
Ortrud Kabus once wrote in a lecture: “The line is not an edge; it is a decision.” One might say: Schmidt made that decision – at the printing press. And it remains visible to this day.