Peter Brotzmann

Catalog for an exhibition held at Corbett vs. Dempsey, October 26 - November 30, 2007. Includes an essay by John Corbett. Design by Kathi Beste. Artist and musician Peter Brötzmann is best known as one of the preeminent figures in contemporary improvised music. He was trained as a visual artist in his hometown of Wuppertal, Germany, in the late 1950s, and his early musical career as a saxophonist and clarinetist was paralleled by his first art exhibitions in Holland and Germany. Brötzmann assisted Nam June Paik on Exposition of Music-Electronic Television, Paik’s first installation at Galerie Parnass in 1963, and he participated in Fluxus events in the mid 1960s. Since that time, along with large-scale oil paintings and delicately lyrical watercolors, Brötzmann has amassed an oeuvre of small constructions, often using found or fabricated wooden boxes as both support and frame, sometimes integrating metal elements including cans, can lids and rusted industrial detritus. In recent years, retrospectives of Brötzmann’s artwork have been mounted in Sweden and Germany.