Dear visitors to Art Miami,

we are delighted to be attending this highly successful art fair here in Miami for the first time this year. So here are a few words about us and the gallery. The Geißler Bentler Gallery looks back on a forty-four-year history. Over time, we have deliberately chosen two areas of focus: First, the modern post-war art of the ZERO artist group, which we are representing this year with two fire gouaches by Otto Piene and two embossings by Günther Uecker.
Otto Piene, who passed away in 2014 and whose fire gouaches are world-famous, was not only an artist es-teemed on both sides of the Atlantic, but also a professor at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the USA because of his artistic visions (Sky Art), where he headed the Center for Advanced Visual Studies. He also initiated various “Sky Events” in the USA, including the “Citything Sky Ballet” in Pittsburgh, in which numerous schools and universities participated.
Günther Uecker is best known for his relief-like nail pictures, which he first created in 1957. The nails are positioned in such a way that the surface of the work appears to move. Due to the three-dimensional aspect, light and shadow vary depending on the viewer‘s perspective. Günther Uecker‘s artworks are part of public collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Walker Art Center, Minneap-olis, among others. His participation in the exhibition ZERO - Countdown to Tomorrow at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2014 is legendary.
We also represent contemporary artists, such as sculptor André Schweers with his wonderful and unique paper casts, and ceramicist Michael Cleff, who interprets artistic ceram-ics in a completely new way. Michael Cleff‘s works can be found in various museums in the USA, including the Long Beach Museum, Long Beach, California, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, and the Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey.
In addition, steel sculptor Thomas Röthel, whose sculptures are made of solid steel under the influence of intense heat, belongs to the gallery‘s circle of artists and will be exhibited by us at this fair. All of his sculptures on display here, which lend the steel a wonderful lightness, are available for pur-chase in a wide range of sizes up to 19 feet.
For the first time in Miami, we are presenting street art-ist Thomas Baumgärtel, who spray-painted his Excellence Banana at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, among many other locations. Since 1983, the artist has used the spray-painted banana as his trademark in a wide variety of meanings, becoming Germany‘s most famous sprayer. In the broadest sense, his works can be classified as Pop Art.
Of course, we hope that you will find the artworks we are exhibiting interesting and that you will enjoy them.

Jenny Geißler-Bentler and Bernd Bentler