Zeitschrift SPUR

This catalogue published in Munich in 1962 compiles a number of artworks and documents produced by Gruppe SPUR as well some work done in collaboration with the Situationist International. It contains the first 6 issues of the journal SPUR, published by the group, 28 original black and white lithographs and 4 color lithographs created by the group and Asger Jorn and a number of manifestoes. In true Situationist fashion, it begins with the declaration that any of the images and texts may be partially or entirely detoured without permission. The document is a systematic and conscious effort to compile the group’s work while it was in favour with the Situationists (1959-1961) and to leave a spur (trace) of their somewhat utopian motto of re-appropriating elements and motifs from past works in a forceful gestural style in order to reconstruct a selective continuity with a pre-Nazi past and to find emancipatory ideas and elements in German history.[1] A large number of artwork re-uses parts of images from Medieval paintings, postcards, etc. in new contexts and merge events, anecdotes and fictions, making the work of the group a collage of styles across time. This notion of cutting through different times is depicted in a drawing made by Hans-Peter Zimmer (SPUR#2, 1960) of the spiral of art history showing a continuity between the past and the contemporary and elements shared between times, repeats and deferrals, advocating the need to historicize a more open-ended narrative of art through time. The group also re-appropriates different fonts, for example, in the introductory text, SPUR Historie, the 1920s font Tiemann-Gotisch is used and in a later flier following the SI conference in Munich in 1959, titled ‘a cultural putsch’, the font Weis-Gotisch from 1936 was used.