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German

1928 —2001

Klaus Burkhardt was a German typographer, printer, graphic designer, and publisher whose work helped shape concrete poetry and experimental print culture during the 1960s. Using letterpress printing and phototypesetting, he transformed language into visual form through repeated letters, folded structures, and typographic arrangements that changed how text could be read and experienced.

Full Bio

Klaus Burkhardt was born in Bürgel, in 1928 and became an important figure in postwar German typography, concrete poetry, and experimental print culture. In 1947 he moved to Stuttgart, where he trained as a typesetter and earned a master’s in typography. Alongside his artistic practice, Burkhardt worked as a printer, graphic designer, publisher, and educator. From 1958 onward, he taught typography at the Stuttgart School of Graphic Arts, which became connected to broader networks of artists, writers, publishers, and theorists exploring new relationships between language, technology, and visual communication. These discussions were closely associated with philosopher Max Bense and the emerging field of Information Aesthetics. During the same period he co-founded the Rauls studio in Stuttgart, later known as Galerie Rauls and Galerie Müller, where he designed and printed materials for exhibitions and artist publications.

Burkhardt used typography to turn printed language into images. Through letterpress printing and phototypesetting, he arranged letters, repeated forms, and folded pages in ways that changed how words were read, seen, and physically experienced. For Burkhardt, reading was also a visual experience, shaped through rhythm, spacing, repetition, and the movement of text across the page. His work developed during a period when artists, writers, designers, and theorists were rethinking the relationship between language, technology, and visual communication. New developments in concrete poetry, publishing, and printing encouraged artists to approach text as something that could be constructed, fragmented, and reorganized visually. Burkhardt participated in collaborative publications, printing projects, and exhibitions connected to these ideas, and through this work became associated with early computer art and international networks exploring visual language and new approaches to print. His work gained international attention when it was included in documenta III in Kassel in 1964 and is now held in major collections including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund. Burkhardt passed away in 2001.