Wilfried Sätty

The Collages of Wilfried Sätty

Born at Bremen in April of 1939, Wilfried Sätty, birth name Wilfried Podriech, was a German graphic artist who became known for his assemblages, black and white collage art, and lithographs. After the end of World War II, Sätty’s early life took place within the surreal landscape of Bremen’s heavily-bombed ruins.

In the mid-1950s, Wilfried Sätty entered into a three-year apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer. After his training, he worked as an engineer in the construction of Brasilia, a modern, planned city development in Brazil to replace Rio de Janeiro as the nation’s capital. Sätty relocated in 1961 to San Francisco, California where he settled in North Beach’s artistic bohemian community and worked as a draftsman for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Inspired by the creativity of the city’s psychedelic sub-culture, Sätty began in 1966 to create pictorial collages; some of these were sold as poster prints.

After establishing a studio on San Francisco’s Powell Strret, Sätty created the first of his assemblage installations, “The North Beach U-Boat”, a warren of rooms containing mirrors, dolls, oriental carpets, and other discarded material found in the trash bins of wealthy residents. During the 1970s, he created animations, colored artwork, lithographic prints, and hundreds of black and white collages. These collages were well-received and were used as illustrations in both establishment periodicals and counter-culture publications.

Poster artists accepted Wilfried Sätty as a peer due to his designs for rock concert advertisements. However, his work was rooted in the more somber and utopian German Surrealism, an art expression that he accented with bits of the bizarre and grotesque. Generally excluded from gallery exhibitions, Sätty turned to publishing his work. Using printing presses to multiply and overprint his collages, he published two volumes of collages; the first of which was “The Cosmic Bicycle”, a collection of seventy-nine collages published in 1971 through “Rolling Stone” magazine’s imprint Straight Arrow Books. Sätty’s second volume from Straight Arrow Books was the 1973 “Time Zone”, a collection of collages in the form of a wordless novel akin to the collage books of Max Ernst.

Sätty created illustrations for the 1976 “The Annotated Dracula” which contained an introduction, notes and bibliography by Romanian-American author and poet Leonard Wolf. He also created eighty black and white illustrations for Crown Publishing Group’s 1976 “The Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe”, a collection of Poe’s horror and literary short stories. Sätty is, however, perhaps best known for his commissioned work for Terence McKenna’s anthology book “The Archaic Revival”, published in May of 1992 by Harper Collins. This collection of essays, interviews and narrative adventures is illustrated through Sätty’s black and white collages depicting themes of ancient cultures seen through modern technology, optical art, and sacred religious architecture.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Wilfred Sätty’s work drew inspiration from the dramatic and often unruly events in the history of San Francisco; these collages cover the period from the 1848 Gold Rush to the 1890s. Sätty died in January of 1982, at the age of forty-two, from an accidental fall from a ladder at his Powell Street home. His final work, “Visions of Frisco: An Imaginative Depiction of San Francisco during the Gold Rush & the Barbary Coast Era”, was published posthumously in 2007 by art historian Walter Medeiros.

Notes: The Wilfried Sätty website is located at: https://satty.art/#top

The online “FoundSF”, a San Francisco digital history archive, has an article on Wilfried Sätty and his “North Beach U-Boat” project: https://www.foundsf.org/Satty_and_the_%22North_Beach_U-Boat%22

“Melt”, an archive of esoteric and contemporary culture, has an article on Wilfried Sätty that includes a biography as well as several images of his artwork: https://visualmelt.com/Wilfried-Satty

San Francisco artist and educator Ryan Medeiros has an article on Wilfried Sätty entitled “Wilfried Sätty; The Psychedelic Alchemist of Collage” on his website: https://ryanmedeiros.substack.com/p/wilfried-satty-the-psychedelic-alchemist

On John Coulthart’s “(feuilleton)” website, there is an article entitled “Wilfried Sätty and the Cosmic Bicycle” that examines Sätty’s life and the publishing of his 1971 book of collages: https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/09/10/wilfried-satty-and-the-cosmic-bicycle/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Wilfried Sätty”, circa 1960-1970s, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Wilfried Sätty, “Listen, Sweet Dreams”, 1967, Lithographic Psychedelic Poster, 88 x 59 cm, Orbit Graphic Arts, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Wilfried Sätty, “Stone Garden”, circa 1960s, Lithographic Psychedelic Poster, 88 x 58 cm, Printed at East Totem West, California, Private Collection

Joe Brainard: “Strange Astounding Plots”

Photographers Unknown, Strange Astounding Plots

“After a white reception in the crystal room of the Hotel
Kenmore, Mrs. George Eustic (Patricia Hays) and her husband
left on a wedding trip to the Pocono Mountains, Pa. They will
live in good old Noodleville.” (Home.)

Where the friendly purple heart is.

I like to do things. I like to eat, and things like that. I like
the things that go on around me. People are nice. And, really, I
like this place I live in. However, some people don’t.

Sally doesn’t.

Sick at heart, the trembling girl shuddered at the words
that delivered her to this terrible horrible fate of the East.
“Nasty!” How could she escape from this oriental monster
into whose hands she had fallen–this strange man whose face
none had seen.

Smile!

It is only a little picture,
            In a little silver frame,
And across the back is written
            My darling mother’s name.
                                                                    (Valentine)

Pink and purple and orange ones with Venetian rose buds
Imported from Venetian
In eleven thrilling volumes

I heard a shot—I saw him run—then I saw her fall—the
woman I love. My leg was broken—and my gun was gone! I had
only one thought—(tee hee!)—his strange, astounding plots
must be avenged—he must die for a coward at my hands! He had
the courage of a lion and the cunning of a rat. He came running
towards me when—suddenly, I—

Ran.
Forgetting the ripped lace, $35, green violence, & free samples.

“I always run when I hear 3 rings!”

. . ..and remember those swell picnics in Birch Grove?

Joe Brainard, Picnic or Yonder Comes the Blue, The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard, 2012 The Library of America

Born in Salem, Arkansas in March of 1942, Joe Brainard was an American writer, poet, and artist associated with the New York School, a group of artists and writers who drew inspiration from the contemporary avant-garde art movements. His innovative body of work included paintings, collages, assemblages, album and book cover designs, as well as, theatrical costume and set designs. As a poet, Brainard was a pioneer in the New York literary movement for his use of comics as a poetic medium.

Brainard spent his childhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma where, during his high school years, he became friends with future poets Ron Padgett, Dick Gallup and Ted Berrigan. He worked as the art editor for five issues of the high school’s literary journal, “The White Dove Review”, published in the 1959/1960 school year. Brainard had a modest solo exhibition of his artwork, which included some of his first collages, at the small local art center The Gallery. He briefly attended the Dayton Art Institute in the autumn of 1960 before his move to New York City.

After reuniting in New York City with his high school friends, Joe Brainard shared an East Village apartment on East 6th Street with Ted Berrigan. The city’s many museums, art galleries and movie theaters became a source of inspiration for him. By September of 1961, Brainard had enrolled at the Art Student League and was studying under portrait painter Robert Brackman who was known for his large figurative works. Despite his financial struggles, Brainard continued to produce collages and small assemblages in the city and, later, in Boston during his ten-month stay in 1963.

In late December of 1963, through the assistance of Ted Berrigan, Brainard began sharing an apartment on East 9th Street with the poet Tony Towle. The assemblages he created in 1964 at this new space went into his first New York solo exhibition at the Alan Gallery in January of 1965. Brainard became a member of both the artistic and literary circles in New York. Among his circle of friends were poets and writers such as Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery, and artists such as Alex Katz, Larry Rivers, Jane Freilicher, and Fairfield Porter.

Joe Brainard began his art career during the early Pop Art movement; however, the wide breadth of his work resists categorization. As a unified whole, the same qualities are apparent in everything he produced: bold simplicity, accuracy of execution, humor, and a low-key sense of the ordinary as sacred. Brainard was able to find the essential details in life experiences and, both vividly and spontaneously, express them in his work. In essence, he was able to locate the extraordinary in the ordinary, as well as make the extraordinary seem ordinary.

During his lifetime, Brainard was the author of five personal publications and collaborated on an additional nineteen publications with other poets and writers. The best known of the personal work are his “I Remember” volumes that were radical departures from the conventions of the traditional memoir. The 1970 “I Remember” depicts his Oklahoma childhood in the 1940s and 1950s as well as his life in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s. His life stories, told through a stream of consciousness, list remembered moments prefixed by the phrase “I remember. . .”. Two sequels followed: the 1972 “I Remember More” and the 1973 “More I Remember More”.

Joe Brainard produced several comic book collaborations with poets and was well regarded for his work as a theatrical set designer and visual artist. Among Brainard’s many New York School friends was poet, author and publisher Kenward Gray Elmslie who became a long-time partner. Elmslie’s Z Press published many works by the New York School, including works which combined Brainard’s art with Elmslie’s own poems. Elmslie also collaborated on operas with Jack Benson and Ned Rorem, and also worked with lyricist John Latouche.

After his success as an artist and poet, Brainard retired from the art world in the early 1980s and devoted his last years to reading. He died in New York City, at the age of fifty-two, on May 25th of 1994 from AIDS-induced pneumonia. Brainard’s art can be found in many private collections and in the public collections of the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Note: An article “Joe Brainard in 1961-1963”, written by his friend and fellow poet Ron Padgett, contains photographs of Brainard’s early works, many never seen by the public. This article can be found at: https://www.ronpadgett.com/Joe%201961-63.pdf

Top Insert Image: Pat Padgett, “Joe Brainard, Calais, Vermont”, 1992, Color Print, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Joe Brainard, “Hot Fudge Sunday”, 1965, C Comics No. 2, Boke Press, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Joe Brainard, “48 Squares”, Date Unknown, Gouache, Graphite, Ballpoint Pen, Felt Tip Marker and Paper Collage on Paper, 34.3 x 27 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Joe Brainard, Untitled (Still Life), 1968, Watercolor on Paper, Private Collection

Fred Tomaselli

Painting Collages by Fred Tomaselli

Brooklynn-based Fred Tomaselli draws upon decorative traditions from around the world to create richly detailed paintings that pulsate with both abstract and figurative forms. In his signature pieces, natural materials such as leaves and seeds mingle with collaged imagery and painted patterns beneath clear layers of resin. The hybrid nature of Tomaselli’s work speaks to the relationship between humanity and the natural world.

Prescription pills, marijuana leaves, peyote buttons, mushrooms and other psychotropic plant matter are carefully arranged along with brightly colored magazine and picture book clippings of human body parts, flowers and insects. These form beautiful, super-sized collages of kaleidoscopic shapes emanating from the altered states of human forms or floating out of the heads of intricately and accurately patterned birds, all the while suspended in multiple layers of clear resin, blowtorched to a high-gloss sheen, and delicately accented with hand-painted details of swirling, fiery flourishes.