“Temporary things can sometimes be quite amazingly enduring. For more than four decades now, the notion of temporary architecture has forever been a part of my thoughts, my work –in short, my life. It has become a lifelong theme, a theme that, play around with it as I might, I have never been able to get out of my system; a theme that I have tried literally to capture in absolutely systematic fashion, always drawing up new design principles, adopting ever more finely honed systems thinking and working with an extraordinarily lively team which understands me and knows how to continue and develop my way of thinking.”

“A long-running series.

‏Sometimes things take on a life of their own, to which even their creators must submit. What began in 1971, in a strictly limited edition, as a personal and annual gift from Burkhardt Leitner, was soon being requested year after year by friends, almost as a tradition. non art became a series, as a biographical project.

Over the course of many years, every quarter, an artist has designed a unique franking stamp for the company – to be used just for those three months. This idea has enabled Burkhardt Leitner not only to integrate art in the everyday and thus conquer the modern separation of art and the utility culture, but also to forge a new direction in corporate culture. Instead of using the anonymous bureaucratic franking stamp provided by the post, the company applies a wholly unique stamp to all its business correspondence. Simultaneously, the humble envelope, that throwaway item of corporate communication par excellence, becomes an integral part of this art-inspired dialogue.‏And every recipient is forced to ask: does art really belong in the waste bin?

“And I was electrified, moved, overwhelmed. Here everything that makes up his personality was visible, tangible, the secrecy, the search for protection. The struggle against childhood trauma, at times hard fought, at times rebellious and then suddenly something humorous, ironic, liberating. At no time did I see art misunderstood as a therapeutic end in itself. There is a consistent striving for form, an analysis of material and color, a search for artistic expression, experimentation. Neither is he interested in the aesthetic as an end in itself, creating a bourgeois illusion of beautification and decoration. For him it is all about knowledge.”

Prof. Ulrich Fleischmann Editor and Author of Monograph

“Burkhardt Leitner System Designer”