The Carl Heidenreich Foundation is thrilled to announce the publication of its first book, Carl/Karl: Three Takes on Heidenreich, available now in hardcover.

The volume features art historical writing on painter Carl Heidenreich, focusing especially on the role of Heidenreich’s artwork of the 1950s and 1960s in embodying a postwar consciousness of migration, exile, and anti-fascist politics.

New and historical essays offer perspectives on the role of exile and migration, anti-fascism and communist politics, and the nonvisual senses to aid in recuperating Heidenreich’s unique work for the present.

Edited by Christopher Squier with an introduction by cultural historian Rachel Schreiber, the book is a compendium of new scholarship, important primary sources, and recent oral histories illuminated by previously unpublished images. Graphic design by Atelier Pickard.

Among the essays, special attention is paid to the ways in which Heidenreich’s works activate the visual and nonvisual senses. In Kathryn Barulich’s essay, Heidenreich’s paintings are understood as developing storm systems, combining water, pigment, and substrate in murky and tempestuous combinations of atmospheric form that recall the artist’s years in exile—years in which the harsh conditions of the elements were a constant concern, as documented in his personal letters. Meanwhile, Squier’s essay considers the role of silence as an auditory and political phenomenon in postwar visual and textual works; he likens Heidenreich’s paintings to acts of refusal, introspection, and indecipherability that provide respite in their nuanced compositions. In Jackie Valle’s deeply philosophical essay, one finds a phenomenological approach to vision and perception. Valle draws on the theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre to call into question our understanding of reality, myth, and memory.

In addition, Hannah Arendt’s 1964 foreword to Heidenreich’s exhibition at the Karmeliterkloster is reprinted here, as is art historian Anne Wagner’s critical essay “Heidenreich’s Abstraction,” originally published in The Threepenny Review.

Former Carl Heidenreich Foundation director Alla Efimova reflects on the formation of the Foundation and provides in-depth interviews with those in Heidenreich’s circle who knew him and collected or stewarded his work over the intervening decades: Richard Buxbaum, Gerhard and Regina Casper, and Emanuel Wolf. An excerpt of the memoirs of Heidenreich’s only child, Monica Smith, is included here as well.

Throughout the publication, vibrant images record works on paper and oil paintings, resurfaced from the archives and shared with the foundation by collectors and museums as part of the Foundation’s ongoing effort to expand the catalogue raisonné of Heidenreich’s work.

The publication includes contributions by Hannah Arendt, Kathryn Barulich, Alla Efimova, Rachel Schreiber, Monica Smith, Christopher Squier, Jackie Valle, and Anne Wagner.

Carl/Karl is available through Amazon.