Working as a self-taught artist, and employed as an office manager in the former GDR, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt used her typewriter to create patterns and abstract compositions with characters and letters at the junction of Concrete Poetry, graphic design and Conceptual Art. Her linguistic explorations, which she further developed into collages later on, are often based on ambiguity. Published on the occasion of the large retrospective at MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam, Nichts Neues explores her typewritings, prints, collages, and paintings in thematic episodes. Although Wolf-Rehfeldt discontinued her artistic practice after the fall of the Berlin Wall, her art has lost none of its relevance. In a poetic, idiosyncratic, and often humorous way, this nonconformist artist explored themes such as environmental issues, intellectual freedom, community, and communication. Her sometimes subtle, sometimes more literal play with words, meanings, and forms continue to reveal the unexpected.

RUTH WOLF-REHFELDT (*1932, Wurzen, Saxony) arrived in East Berlin in 1950. From the 1960s, she created paintings, pastels, drawings, and, from about 1970, her so-called “Typewritings.” She actively participated in the international Mail Art program, sending her works across the globe. Only in recent years has her work been rediscovered. In 2017 she was both a newcomer and a senior star of documenta 14.