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April 23, 2009 – May 22, 2009

March 13, 2009 – April 10, 2009

November 27, 2008 – December 27, 2008

November 12, 2008 – November 22, 2008

Photographs from the 1869—1870 Polynesian excursion of the French Navy Commander, Paul-Émile Miot (1827—1900) An elaborate, handsome book of formerly unpublished photographs, drawings and objects from Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. When the French Navy Commander Paul-Émile Miot was sent to Oceania on the Astrée in 1869, he took his camera equipment along, as he had on his previous expeditions including the one to Newfoundland.

The photographs taken on the Polynesian journey and published for the first time in this illustrated volume are unique, not only because they are the first photographic record of the South Sea people.

The distinctive, complex compositions and the fond eye with which he stages the portraits, make his photographs rare historical documents.

Miot’s photographs are neither an artist’s „snapshots“ of exotic scenery nor a journalist’s academic documentation of a foreign place. With his photographs, he seems to have captured the essence of a paradise, the last paradise as the 19th Century Western World imagined it to be.

His formal portraits of the Tahitians are iconic likenesses from an era of transition from painting to photography. In remote Polynesia, this development took place 30 years later than in Northern America and Europe.

June 27, 2008 – July 30, 2008

The public release of the photographic processes in 1839 first enabled the depiction of nature, seemingly free of interpretation. With immediate effect, photography became an essential medium of conveying and sharing works of art. While until then the camera obscura or camera lucida were in use, requiring a skilled draftsman to put the image to paper, the photographic process made light itselfthe draftsman and nature could create it’s own reproduction.

By 1839 it was possible, in effect, for art-enthusiasts to view works of art „in natura“. Demand was soon made for images of objects more distant and inaccessible. Art and travel enthusiasts wanted the privilege of seeing reproductions of the distant treasures of the world, among which were the Capitoline Venus and the Sphinx.

Unlike today, a photographic image of a work of art was no reproduction, but a precious original.

Though at first travelling artists like Itier, Du Camp, and Bisson Frères met the great demand for views of foreign treasures, they were later replaced by professional resident photographers.

The photographer has considerable ability to give the image his personal artistic stamp. Antiquities were monumentalized, often disappointing travellers to the original. Never will antique Rome seem as spectacular as in those photos of Anderson, Mac Pherson or Molins.

October 11, 2007 – October 14, 2007

On the occasion of Munich Highlights (October 11th — 14th, 2007), Galerie Daniel Blau is proud to open its exhibition “A.R. Penck — Paintings and Drawings from the 60s and 70s”.

A.R. Penck, born Ralf Winkler 1939 in Dresden, is a central figure in German art of the post-war era, as recently demonstrated by the major retrospective shown in Frankfurt, Kiel and Paris.His abstracted figures, the “stickmen”, and mystical symbols, common to his pre-1980 works, created before his expatriation to West Germany, originated from his interest in prehistoric painting and hieroglyphs. His artist’s name is adopted from the Geologist and Geographer Albrecht Penck. A.R. Penck’s “Standart” — works are concerned with, in a most fundamental manner, individuals in their society.

The gallery will be exhibiting Penck’s early works, still created in the GDR. These paintings mark a crucial phase in Penck’s artistic development.

September 12, 2003 – October 31, 2003

December 3, 2004 – January 30, 2005