The Aesthetics of Beuron and other writings

by Desiderius Lenz

Translated from the German by John Minihane and John Connolly
Introduction by Hubert Krins
Afterword and notes by Peter Brooke

Paperback 105 pages with 10 illustrations in black and white and 6 in colour
ISBN 978 0 903427 10 4

The book

The three essays contained in this book are the first translations into English of the Benedictine monk Desiderius Lenz, who as a painter and sculptor in the late nineteenth century anticipated many of the ideas associated with twentieth-century art – the rejection of naturalism and perspective and an insistence on ’abstract’, geometrically based principles for painting. The artistic school founded at his monastery at Beuron in Southern Germany had a great influence on ecclesiastical art and gained admirers among the European avant-garde, including Alexei Jawlensky, Alphonse Mucha and Paul Sérusier.

In an introduction by German art historian Hubert Krins, Lenz is seen in the context of German nineteenth-century art, and in his afterword Peter Brooke shows how Lenz’s thinking illustrates the relationship between modernism in art and the search for the sacred.