The psychoanalyst, publisher and mail artist Lutz Wohlrab (born 1959) has been part of international mail art networks since the early 1980s. Through address lists and project announcements, amateur and professional artists from the GDR exchanged cards, stamps, and other formats by mail among themselves and worldwide, creating collective and often subversive works of art. As a result, mail artists in the GDR were often the focus of state security and postal censorship. In this interview, Wohlrab talks about the mail art scene in the GDR and the existence of this international form of art and communication to this day.
In the second part of his interview, Lutz Wohlrab talks about international connections of Mail Artists in the GDR. There were escpecially strong ties to Latin America, in particular to the artist Clemente Padín whose arrest during the military dictatorship in Uruguay in the late 1970s cause a wave of artistic solidarity. Lutz Wohlrab also mentions Mail Art relations in western Europe and dicusses the role of Joseph Beuys.
In addition to his artistic work, Lutz Wohlrab has contributed to numerous publications and exhibitions on mail art. He runs his own publishing house, which publishes books and editions on the subject: https://www.wohlrab-verlag.de
Wohlrab also takes care of a collection of mail art, which includes the private archive of Oskar Manigk. Since 2005, Wohlrab has been working with Birger Jesch on a digital mail art index that collects information on the biographies and works of mail artists: https://mailartists.wordpress.com
Selected Bibliography
Lutz Wohlrab: Postkunst, Berlin 2019.
Lutz Wohlrab (Hg.): Robert Rehfeldt – Kunst im Kontakt. Berlin 2009.
Friedrich Winnes und Lutz Wohlrab (Hg.): Mail Art Szene DDR 1975 bis 1990, Berlin 1994.
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