No. 31 (2020): sediment

5 years of Avantgarde: Helmut Rywelskis art intermedia, Cologne 1967-1972

The Cologne gallerist Helmut Rywelski caused a furor between 1967 and 1972 with his art intermedia gallery and his critique of the commercial art world. Many spectacular actions, including Wolf Vostell’s “Ruhender Verkehr” (1969), an Opel Kapitän enclosed in concrete, or Jörg Immendorff’s “Für alle Liebenden der Welt” (1967) remain unforgettable. Rywelski represented art “in and between all media,” during an era when public life was increasingly falling under the spell of various media. He was especially concerned with socially engaged, critical, and political art, such as that being made by H. P. Alvermann, Joseph Beuys, and Lil Picard, and while he himself was part of the new art market, he at the same time strived against it, until, after five years, acknowledging the inexorable monetarization of the commercial art world, he gave up his gallery and began working as a journalist again.