Retrospective in Jewelry

He is one of the most important and innovative jewelry artists of our time and one of the few who dare to tell stories with their jewelry. Manfred Bischoff (1947 – 2015) searched for a long time for the right materials to express his thoughts and feelings. By the end-eighties at the latest, when he was living in Italy, he had found his unmistakable design language: His materials – gold and coral as well as his very special way of presenting the pieces. Many works include a drawing on which words play an important role in a peculiar script and on which rings, brooches or earrings can find their place, but do not have to.

In our exhibition we are showing around forty works from the artist’s estate, which is in the care of our curator Rike Bartels. Many works from the eighties trace Manfred Bischoff’s career and quest. Bischoff was open-minded, he took up trends from pop culture and art and experimented with simple materials, with photography, wire, duropor and plastic. His years of study with Reinhard Reiling in Pforzheim and Hermann Jünger in Munich and especially his time in Berlin were formative.

Even if you don’t grasp Manfred Bischoff’s narrative works at first glance (you’re not supposed to), they touch you immediately – through beauty, great craftsmanship, warmth, lightness and wit as in his ring ‘Solomann’. For us, Bischoff’s works are like little poems, symbolic, emotional and, in the end, enigmatic and perfect precisely for that reason.