Markus Brunetti: FACADES IV

Markus Brunetti’s (b. 1965; Bavaria, Germany) new works further his mission to document Europe’s religious architecture, and FACADES IV emphasizes his visions of prominent churches, monasteries, and cathedrals in Italy, France and Spain. These buildings are representative of Europe’s foremost religious architecture, and Brunetti has finally realized them in the FACADES series after having spent more than two decades constantly refining his self-devised photographic technique.

 

Together, Brunetti and Schöner travel Europe in a converted firetruck-turned-photo lab. The two live and work on the road, returning to their subjects over years to take thousands of photographs of each structure, going meter-by-meter. Brunetti then edits, layers, and arranges each shot into composite images that provide an otherwise impossible, perfected view of the building’s façade. With each new entry to the series, the demand for precision and consistency increases, and with it, the difficulty. The result exceeds the possibilities of any single photograph, even at the highest possible resolution, creating works that stand as monuments in and of themselves.

 

Brunetti’s practice could be likened to Bernd and Hilla Becher’s serial photographs documenting German industrial buildings, yet the artist likens his methods more closely to conventions of Old Master painting. Though digital, the hand-constructed nature of the FACADES series speaks to the same root concerns for which contemporary audiences turn to traditional mediums—a dedication to beauty crafted for aesthetic and spiritual transcendence. Brunetti and Schöner share that interest, accomplishing their work without the assistance or interference of artificial intelligence. Architecture, in both historical artworks and in the FACADES series, cannot be understood by a prompt or a snapshot. 

 

Like the masters of the Renaissance, the artist offers subjective interpretations of his monumental subjects, not simply by photographing them, but by crafting a view of each structure according to his conceptual understanding of architecture as a practice. Brunetti’s images translate the presence of each building in an idealized, draftsman-like way, and they present renderings that resemble how a building’s architects might have imagined it as much as they do the building itself.

 

The full extent of Brunetti’s vision is apparent in the debut of Roma, Basilica di San Pietro (2007-2026). This monolithic depiction of St. Peter’s Basilica captures its face down to the minutiae—including the two Swiss Guards at the work’s lower left, which are the first humans ever shown in the FACADES series. Brunetti and Schöner returned to St. Peter’s Basilica seven times over nineteen years. With each survey, they grew closer to realizing this grand image—a particular challenge given that it is one of the largest and most visited churches in the world. 

 

A further culmination arrives in Santiago de Compostela, Catedral (2009-2024), a tribute to the Spanish cathedral that marks the end of the Camino de Santiago, a fabled millennium-old Christian pilgrimage. The eighteenth-century Baroque Obradoiro façade is resplendent with sculptural detail, capped with a statue of St. James, flanked by the Bell and Ratchet towers. Brunetti’s repeated returns to and contemplation of his subject recall its thousands of yearly worshippers, and his rigorous practice preserves the work of architects and laborers of centuries past.

 

Markus Brunetti’s work has been exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Köln, Germany; as well as the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Le Locle, Switzerland and the Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin, which both house Brunetti’s work in their permanent collection. Brunetti is featured in public and institutional collections around the globe, including the Jewish Museum, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the Hood Museum of Art, Darthmouth College, Hanover, NH; the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, among others. Brunetti and Schöner live and work across Europe, always furthering the FACADES series.