Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1943 Stuttgart, Germany

Year of Migration to the UK: 1965

Biography

Artist, art teacher, printer, and publisher, Hansjörg Mayer was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1943. During the Second World War, the family printing business was destroyed by a bomb, leading to a partnership with another printer and the establishment of Staib und Mayer. Conveniently located between home and school, the printing shop became a regular after-school destination for the young Mayer. This early exposure sparked his interest in the medium, later influencing his Druckprozessbildern (‘printed images’) and inspiring a lasting engagement with the interplay between text and image, as well as the intricacies of the printing process itself. Mayer subsequently completed traineeships with book printers in Switzerland and the USA before returning to Germany to study philosophy at the University of Stuttgart. Through his university friend, Max Bense, he was introduced to the local avant-garde scene. By the early 1960s, Mayer had begun experimenting with hand-press printing and typography. As the publisher for artist Dieter Roth, he took on the challenge of translating even the most radical artistic visions within the constraints of traditional letterpress. In 1963, he founded Edition Hansjörg Mayer, which would soon become one of the foremost publishers of artists’ books. By 1965, he had taken up a lecturing position at Bath Academy of Art, then based at Corsham Court (the historic home of Lord Methuen) in Wiltshire in the west of England, and by 1966, he moved permanently to the UK. He then relocated to a new position, becoming a senior tutor at Watford School of Art, close to London. During his time in England, between 1966 and 1969, he established a collaboration with the renowned Petersburg Press in west London, which also focused on artists’ books and experimental work, while continuing to run his own eponymous Galerie der Edition Hansjörg Mayer in Stuttgart, back in Germany.

In England, Mayer quickly became a central figure in British avant-garde publishing and typographic art. Upon his arrival, he lived with Jasia Reichardt, the Polish-born art critic, curator, writer, director, and advocate for computer and experimental art (and niece of the Polish avant-garde refugee artist, Franciczka Themerson, married to fellow émigré, Stefan Themerson, inventor of Semantic Poetry), which further fuelled his interest in new technologies. Mayer published the works of numerous experimental artists and poets, with a particular emphasis on Concrete Poetry, as well as the works of UK artists, such as Northern Rhodesian-born John Latham; pop artist, Richard Hamilton; sculptor, Eduardo Paolozzi; Ian Hamilton Finlay; and painter and printmaker, Tom Phillips. Through Mayer’s influence and involvement at Bath Academy, it briefly became a hub for the English Concrete Poetry movement. Mayer’s presence facilitated John Furnival, husband of émigré textile artist Astrid Furnival, in securing a position at the Academy. Phillips, along with Concrete poet and Benedictine monk, Dom Sylvester Houédard, were also affiliated with the institution for a time. In 1986, two concurrent London exhibitions, one at Nigel Greenwood Books, and one at Bookworks celebrated different aspects of his publishing work.

Mayer is a pivotal international figure in avant-garde publishing, artists’ books, experimental typography, and concrete and visual poetry, occasionally venturing into film and, at times, music. His practice draws on both the historical avant-garde, with influences from Kurt Schwitters, and its post-war legacies, such as the work of John Cage. Mayer also produced and published his own works, including typographic pieces he termed ‘typoems’ and conceptual explorations he called ‘typoactions.’ These works evoke, at different moments, influences from Constructivism, Abstract Expressionism, Op Art, or Japanese ink paintings. Mayer’s artistic practice centres on transforming typography, allowing letters to transcend their function as mere communication tools and to emerge as visual entities. This exploration aligns with concrete poetry principles, where language is deconstructed and reshaped into patterns and rhythms. In Mayer’s works, text evolves into decorative elements - intricate grids, layered textures, and abstract arrangements - echoing the avant-garde’s fascination with the tension between order and chaos, image and text, meaning and abstraction. By liberating letters from their communicative roles, Mayer transforms them into visual poetry, generating meaning through form, repetition, and abstraction, rather than syntax or semantics. His preference for the typeface, Futura, with its clean geometric lines, enhances his exploration of modernity and reinforces his departure from traditional text-image conventions.

Mayer has had numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout his career. In 2017, a major retrospective was held in Germany titled The Smell of Ink at ZKM in Karlsruhe. The 2019–20 exhibition Hansjörg Mayer: Typoems and Artist Books at the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin highlighted his significant influence on the Concrete poetry movement and 1960s art. It explored his work through his publishing house and his innovative typographic works (‘typoems’), as well as his collaborations with artists like Roth, which helped to bring Concrete poetry to an international audience. Hansjörg Mayer lives and works in London while maintaining strong ties to the German art scene. In the UK public domain his works are held in the collections of the Royal Academy of Art, Tate, and the Walker Art Gallery.

Related books

Bronac Ferran, Autopoetics: Hansjörg Mayer's titles of the nineteen-sixties (PhD thesis: Birkbeck, University of London, 2023)
Susanne Bieri, Swiss artists' books = Schweizer Künstlerbücher = Livres d'artistes suisses = Libri d'artista svizzeri (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, 2022)
Barbara Wien and Dieter Roth, Dieter Roth: Collected Interviews (London: Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 2019)
Bronac Ferran, The Smell of Ink and Soil: the Story of Edition Hansjörg Mayer (Köln: Walther König, 2017)
Victoria Bean et al, ed., The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century (London: Hayward Publishing, 2015)
Stefan Ripplinger, Hansjörg Mayer - Foto, Film, Typo (Köln: Buchhandlung Walther König, 2014)
Tom Phillips, The Heart of the Humument (Stuttgart/London: Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 1985)
Dieter Roth, 246 Little Clouds (Stuttgart: Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 1976)
Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, Abba-Zaba (London: Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 1970)
Ian Hamilton Finlay, Futura 7 (location not indicated: Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 1966)

Public collections

Related organisations

Bath Academy of Art (Lecturer )
Watford School of Art (Senior Tutor )

Selected exhibitions

Hansjörg Mayer: Typoems and Artist Books, Kunstbibliothek, Berlin, Germany ( 2019–20)
Hansjörg Mayer: The Smell of Ink (solo exhibition), ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2017)
Artist, publisher, gallery owner – Hansjörg Mayer on his 70th (solo exhibtion), Graphic Cabinet, Dortmund, Germany (2013)
Artists In & Out of Cologne (group show), Institute of Contemporary Art/University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, and traveling (2006-07)
Hansjörg Mayer – Zen Touch (solo exhibition), Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin, Germany (2006)
Two concurrent exhibitions of book works published by Edition Hansjörg Mayer, Bookworks, London and Nigel Greenwood Books, London (1986)
Cremer Collection – European Avant-Garde 1950–1970 (group show), Kunsthalle Tübingen, Tübingen, West Germany (1973)
George Brecht: The book of the tumbler on fire (solo exhibition), Hansjörg Mayer Gallery, Stuttgart, West Germany (1969)
Diter Rot: Books, graphics, pictures, objects (solo exhibition), Hansjörg Mayer Gallery, Stuttgart, West Germany (1967)
Dorothy Jannone: Graphics, images, people (solo exhibition), Hansjörg Mayer Gallery, Stuttgart, West Germany (1967)
Hansjörg Mayer – typoems (solo exhibition), Study Gallery, Stuttgart, West Germany (1965)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Hansjörg Mayer ]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Hansjörg Mayer artist