my old friend peter

. Hansjorg Mayer
. Jasia Reichardt
. Brian Eno
hi john
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so i think i met peter for the first time ... at the opening of the
exhibition... between poetry and painting ...curated by jasia
reichhard ...at the ...institute of contemporary art ...in london in
1965... i had a lot of the stuff i published by then.. and my own so
called typoems... many of them included in the exhibition... and
peter ...like many of the more interesting british artists were
there . . . i decided there and then.. (my first visit to britain)
that i wanted to live in london ...and moved beginning of 1966 to
england ...(teaching at.. bath academy of art ..amongst other
things) ...peter and i met quite often... and i offered to exhibit
some of his work ...at my small gallery in stuttgart ...in 1967 ...and
published his... programmed squares 11... as ...futura 24 . in
1968... he was already interested in programmatic ways of working for
some years... which very much interested me at the time
he already taught at.. watford school of art.. and after some visits
there.. he was very keen to lure me there and ....offered me a
special.. (highly paid) ..senior lecturership for one term... which i
passed on to dieter roth... (who was very short of money at the
time) ... meeting dieter was an opening of another world for
peter ... and influenced his work significantly for years to come
(most interestingly) ... i had already started to publish many of
dieters books and we used his time there to produce a number of
publications ... which meant i spent quite a lot of time in
watford ... and peter finally convinced me to teach there as well
(overlapping at first with bath ... which eventually i gave up) ... we
attracted many great visiting lecturers ... to work with us there
richard hamilton ... eduardo paolozzi ... brian eno ... just to mention a
few .. during that time ...(i taught there until 1978) .. i published
numerous books by peter .. (as already listed) .. having created an
experimental printing workshop ... where many of peters books and
prints were done
there were also numerous collaborations . involving . sound . moving
image projects etc ... a very creative and interesting time for
everybody ... much of it engineered by good old peter ... who was also a
great and much loved teacher ... an artist ... with a very broad
interest and knowledge base ... a great friend to have had
.
i just put it down as it came into my
head
all best
hansjorg
.
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"my old friend peter", Hansjörg Mayer, a reflection on Peter Schmidt via email, 2010
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Shown here as originally typed. The author, a noted concrete poet.
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