Tomas Schmit

Other upcoming projects (both in September 2021) include a reprint of his catalogues of works with an updated and extended version of the fourth catalogue (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther and Franz König, Cologne, and Wiens Verlag, Berlin) as well as an exhibition project organized by Neuer Berlin Kunstverein (n.b.k.) in collaboration with the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art [de], Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for Contemporary Art and the tomas schmit archive.

The last publication about Schmit has been published in 2008 under the title Dreizehn Montagsgespräche and will soon be republished in English and with additional materials (Wiens Verlag, Berlin). The book consists of thirteen conversations between the artist and the art historian Wilma Lukatsch, which focus around the artist's life, his work principles and collaborations.

In the following decades, he developed works that comprise several thousand drawings. He published editions and books. His main topics are language, logic, paradoxes, biology, cybernetics, cerebral research, behaviour research and apperception theory. In 1989, his book "first draft (of central aesthetics)" provided an introduction to cerebral research, which the cyberneticist Valentin Braitenberg characterized in the following way:

Schmit has played a considerable role in shaping the radical questioning of civil art and approaches to new aesthetics. It was his correspondence with George Maciunas that made a theoretical discussion on the political and aesthetic concept of the Fluxus period possible. As an artist, he took part in Fluxus events that are nowadays considered milestones in the art of the 1960s. As organiser, he arranged for the legendary event "20th July TU Aachen" 1964 (with Beuys, Köpcke, Vostell, Paik amongst others). In 1982, in the book 1962 Wiesbaden Fluxus 1982, he wrote the theoretical text "about f" which represents one of the rare profound evaluations of the ideas of Fluxus from the artist's perspective. Friends and colleagues who he worked with and who appreciated him due to his consequent artistic position and wrote about him, include Nam June Paik, George Brecht, Arthur Köpcke, Ludwig Gosewitz and Dieter Roth – just to mention a few. In 1982, Dieter Roth adjudged him the scholarship of the Rembrandt-Prize which had been awarded to him. In 1986, the Kurt-Schwitters-Prize of the City Hanover was awarded to Schmit.

Tomas Schmit (born 13 July 1943 in Thier, now part of Wipperfürth, died 4 October 2006 in Berlin, Germany) was an artist and author associated with the Fluxus movement of the early 1960s. During the subsequent 40 years, he created drawings, texts, books and artists' books. From the late 1960s until his death, he continuously exhibited in international galleries. With his series of drawings, he is represented in renowned museums and collections: among them Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Collection of Harald Falckenberg in Hamburg. Schmit's works are represented by the galleries Michael Werner in Cologne / New York, Marlene Frei in Zurich, Rudolf Springer and Barbara Wien in Berlin and the Edition Armin Hundertmark in Gran Canaria, Spain.