Achim Duchow: Blind Faith
Catalogue Raisonné 1971 – 1993
Max Schulze/Lili Helena Duchow/Barbara Lange-Duchow

A look at the catalogue raisonné of Düsseldorf painter, photographer, and object artist Achim Duchow (1948 – 1993) suggests a complex oeuvre that is ripe for rediscovery. His playful relationship with authorship, subjectivity, and media and the directness with which he addresses the subjects that motivate him have led to the creation of a body of work whose impact is still unfolding today. In over 400 pages, the book lists all the phases of the artist’s oeuvre mapped in chronological order and punctuated by individual essays: the list covers Duchow’s collaboration with Sigmar Polke in the 1970s, the two and a half years he spent in Japan, his return in 1981 to an art scene that had rapidly shifted its focus to marketability, his efforts to construct a new sense of himself as an artist and cultural worker, and his painterly engagement with German history and politics, with colonialism and reunification, and with art informel and constructivism. The catalogue raisonné lists all the works that can be located along with texts by Duchow himself. Close associates and historians shed light on the radical context in which his life unfolded.