Der Brunnen / The Fountain by Georg Kolbe Museum
Der Brunnen / The Fountain is a monograph on Georg Kolbe’s Fountain of Dancers (1922), published by Distanz in the summer of 2025 for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin. The book traces its artistic, historical, and socio-political significance through essays, chronology, and contributions from writers and visual artists.
From the publisher’s website:
The book’s objective is to subject the stereotypes implicit in the fountain figures to critical interrogation with a view to histories of racism and misogyny as well as the anti-Semitic history of the fountain as a Nazi looted art object. An illustrated chronology retraces the object’s history and provenance.
The publication, designed by Berlin-based Studio Pandan, uses Commercial Type’s Review for the German text and cover titles, and Suisse Typefaces’ Suisse Neue for the English text. Review, a neo-grotesk originally designed for the New York Times Style Magazine, lends clean, structured legibility, while Suisse Neue, a contemporary slab-serif with grotesk proportions and bracketed serifs, adds a grounded, editorial weight.
The pairing establishes a contrast between modern neutrality and typographic presence. Together, the fonts balance approachability with authority, mirroring the project’s dialogue between historical documentation and critical interpretation.
