Robert Janitz at Anahuacalli: Curated by Karla Niño de Rivera

Saenger Galería is honored to present the most recent solo show of Robert Janitz, a German painter based in Mexico, which will be held at the Anahuacalli Museum (June 10th - September 11th 2022).

After making his debut in Latin America with a pair of solo exhibitions — the first a site-specific project which took place last spring, and the second in Saenger Galería at the beginning of the year — Robert Janitz (Alsfeld, 1962) will now present a selection of large-format paintings and sculptures integrated into both the natural space of the Valley of Mexico and the architectural space of the Anahuacalli.

This major installation was created by the artist, especially for this occasion: his first exhibition in a Mexican and Latin American museum. Speaking on the matter, Janitz has stated: "Paris allowed me to process my German romanticism and move on to denial; later, New York made me broaden and expand this feeling. Finally, I realized that I was looking for another kind of content and container; I realized that I had grown tired of the screen of the white cube. In Mexico, I began to collaborate with the architecture that was present, first with Luis Barragan at Casa Gilardi, and now with O'Gorman and Diego Rivera at the Anahuacalli Museum.” The works that make up Robert Janitz at the Anahuacalli arise from a change of climate, with all that this implies in terms of natural light, color and outlook.

The artist comments: "Josef Albers called Mexico 'the promised land of abstraction'. For me, however, it turned out to be very different. What I was looking for in New York —and did not find —was figurative. The motif of denial of the back of heads in my work from that period turned into paintings depicting heads formed of volcanoes and large-scale sculptures made out of volcanic rock, the very stone that gives a name and identity to a large part of Mexico City —the Pedregal.

The concrete style that characterized my works with thick, gestural brushstrokes was transformed into forms that simulate letters or architectural constructions. Perhaps the symbol of the ampersand (&) is the root of the current hieroglyphic figures that emerge in my painting." As a result of this search and subsequent encounter, Robert Janitz offers a heterogeneous and coherent vision of a landscape that transforms the real — a volcano, for example — into a symbol and a gesture, a writing that summons us with its combination of familiarity and strangeness.