Archive and research platform
for prints and multiples in
Concrete, Constructive,
and Minimalist art.
Basel — Est. 2025
Square Index is a Swiss association dedicated to the systematic archiving, documentation, and preservation of prints and multiples in Concrete, Constructive, and Minimalist art.
Concrete art is inseparable from the conditions of its production: the mathematical system behind a work, the printing technique chosen to execute it, the publisher's decision about edition size and paper, the collaboration between artist and printer. To lose a publisher archive is not merely to lose inventory records. It is to lose the reasoning behind the work.
A generation of artists, publishers, and estate managers is passing. With them goes knowledge that exists nowhere in writing — the correspondence behind a portfolio, the reasons an edition was limited, the technical instructions a printer carried only in memory. Square Index exists to document this before the window closes.
We operate on a fully digital basis, making documented holdings accessible to researchers, institutions, and collectors worldwide.
Systematic cataloguing of edition holdings with complete provenance, technical, and contextual metadata.
A digital database freely accessible to researchers, institutions, and the public — the central reference for this field.
Active assistance to artist estates, publisher archives, and foundations in organising and making accessible their holdings.
Selected facilitation of access to archived holdings through exhibitions, art fairs, and research partnerships.
The publisher generation of Concrete and Constructive art — active from the 1960s onward — is the transmission layer between the founding figures and living practice. When it passes undocumented, a chapter of European art history becomes unverifiable.
What is at risk is not primarily paper. It is embodied knowledge: the correspondence that led to a specific portfolio, why an edition was limited to a certain number, which works were never publicly released and why, what the printer understood that no certificate records. This knowledge has a biological deadline.
If you hold, manage, or know of an archive at risk — contact us. Documentation is the first act of preservation.
Publisher records, production files, artist correspondence, edition documentation, printer's proofs, workshop notes — any format, any condition.
Foundations and institutions seeking a partner for systematic documentation of their print and multiple holdings, with full provenance and contextual metadata.
Collectors, researchers, and institutions are invited to join Square Index as passive members or supporting partners. The critical window is 2026–2038.
Four named archives form the founding network of Square Index — spanning eight decades of European Concretist and Constructive print production, from the founding generation of Swiss Concrete art to living practice.
Direct link to the founding generation of Swiss Concrete art. Pupil circle of Max Bill. Foundation holds the complete estate.
Over fifty years of active publishing in Concrete and Constructive art. One of the few publisher archives with complete production records and correspondence.
Active curatorial and publishing operation. Publisher of the 0,0,0 portfolio — 30 international artists, edition of 250.
Contemporary Concretist print publisher. Works with Olivier Mosset, John Armleder, Jan van der Ploeg. Bridges historical and living practice.
Curator and publisher. Director of CA Franches-Montagnes and Kunstkontor Basel. Board member of the Hans Hinterreiter Stiftung. Son of the artist Jo Niemeyer. Studied art history at the University of Zürich (MA). Previously Managing Director of Artusiast Berlin, sold to Artnet AG New York in 2017.
Co-founder and director of SYMETRIA Editions. Artist and publisher with an extensive international network in the living Concretist and Geometric Abstraction community. Works with Olivier Mosset, John Armleder, Jan van der Ploeg, Nathalie du Pasquier.