Begegnung (Encounter) is a four-part series of colour woodcuts by Matthias Mansen (b. 1958). Mansen is regarded as one of the most important contemporary innovators of the woodcut medium. His work stands in the tradition of great woodcut artists such as Albrecht Dürer while also drawing on German Expressionist printmaking and the Japanese tradition of colour woodcuts. Particularly influential in Mansen’s artistic development were his teacher Markus Lüpertz, under whom he studied in Karlsruhe from 1978 to 1984, and Georg Baselitz.
In Encounter, Mansen combines elements of photography and collage with cinematic montage. The series was created using the so-called “lost-block” technique, in which the same woodblock is progressively reworked and printed in different states. Each stage of printing forms an independent image while simultaneously documenting the work’s process of creation. Thus, the work depicts not only a motif but also makes its transformation and development visible.
Encounter was created in 1991 during a period when Mansen was working in New York City. During this time, he developed key elements of the visual language that would characterize his later work: the division of a motif into multiple image states, the exploration of light and space, and the understanding of the image as an open, process-oriented phenomenon. Inspired by the dynamism and intensity of urban life in New York, the series depicts two people approaching one another in what could be an everyday street scene. By distributing this encounter across four individual woodcuts, it appears as a temporal sequence—comparable to a cinematic scene or a sequence of panels in a comic. The meeting is experienced not as a frozen moment, but as movement and process.
In conjunction with room 038, the work acquires an additional layer of meaning. The series corresponds with the architectural concept of “discursive intimacy” that characterizes the building inaugurated in 2019. Room 038 houses not only the “Monday Meeting,” the central venue for scholarly exchange within the institute, but also numerous international academic events. Mansen’s Encounter thus becomes a symbol of meeting, coming together, and dialogue within the MPIL. Through its process-oriented structure, the series reflects the dynamics of encounter and exchange while highlighting the special role of the space as a place for collective thinking and discussion.
