33 States
Edition33 States
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33 States
is an artist’s book that emerged from a joint journey through the United States in the summer of 1991 by the New York poet Robert Fitterman and the East German artists Sabine Herrmann and Klaus Killisch. The project grew out of their first encounter shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall at the COOP Gallery and Workshop of Wilfriede Maaß in East Berlin, where the idea of traveling together through the United States was conceived.
For Robert Fitterman, the trip was the realization of a long-held, once-in-a-lifetime adventure. For Sabine Herrmann and Klaus Killisch, who had grown up in the closed society of the GDR, the United States existed largely as a projection shaped by literature, film, and music—by books such as On the Road, films like Hair, and the mythology of the Woodstock festival. It was a highly romanticized image, now confronted with lived experience.
The book brings together three distinct perspectives. The vast and unfamiliar American landscapes, markedly different from European ones, became the primary source of inspiration for Sabine Herrmann’s works. Klaus Killisch, by contrast, approached the journey from a more inward, historical perspective, using imagery rooted in the “old world,” inspired by figures such as William Blake and Gustave Moreau. At a time of profound societal transformation in East Germany, Killisch was seeking a new beginning for his artistic practice, turning consciously toward the visual language of 19th-century art history.
Robert Fitterman’s poetry is closely tied to the conversations and encounters that unfolded during the journey. Each short, laconic poem corresponds to a particular state or situation. Together, the texts form a diary-like structure that traces both the outward and return journeys—from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again. At the midpoint of the book, the object itself is physically turned and inverted, mirroring the reversal of direction and perspective.
33 States is both a travelogue and a reflection on transition: between continents, cultures, and historical moments, and between personal and collective ideas of freedom, landscape, and identity.
Artworks: Sabine Herrmann, Klaus Killisch
Poetry: Robert Fitterman
65 × 45 cm / approx. 25.6 × 17.7 in., 20 pages
16 lithographs, handset text
Japanese binding, split book block, 1993
Edition of 20, numbered and signed
33 states is part of the collection of the Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art, BLmK.
33 States: An Open Road
Artist book by German artists Sabine Herrmann and Klaus Killisch, poems by American poet Robert Fitterman
33 States is an open book. The title is open, the artwork is open, the poetry is open, the landscape is open, the future itself is open.
33 States is a collaborative artists book between German artists Sabine Herrmann and Klaus Killisch, and American poet Robert Fitterman. In the summer of 1991, the three of them set out on a six-week road trip from New York City to San Francisco and back. They did what artists do—they made drawings and wrote short poems in their notebooks. When they returned, they decided to make a book where the artwork and the short poems could co-exist in a loose, open dialogue.
33 States. Is it 33 moods? 33 states of mind? 33 states traveled in the continental US? The title is meant to be as open as the collaboration. In 1991, Killisch and Herrmann were already exhibiting their artwork in East Germany and abroad, but this hyper-expansive vision of the West could only be imagined from afar, or from the movies. 1991 was a pivotal political moment—the Berlin Wall had recently come down, and the “reunification” process was underway. East Germans were testing their newfound “freedom” by traveling the world even though many still carried a passport to a country that no longer existed. Killisch and Herrmann carried their East Germany passports through the US and parts of Mexico. Fitterman drove the car with his US license, experiencing the American West through their eyes.
33 States is about this historical moment—how it became possible for an American poet and two East Berlin artists to travel across the wide open expanse of the American West—the same open expanse as seen in John Ford films, the same real, hyper-real, unreal, and quotation-real landscape read about in Jean Baudrillard.
33 States is a diary of an artist journey colliding with a political moment where ideas of “open” and “expansion” take on new meaning. It is a diary that is as open as the landscape itself—both political and geologically. As a book, there is no beginning or end, no up or down, the pages are cut bilaterally and formatted so that any of the poems can be matched with any image.
33 States is a deeply personal book of open futures, friendship, and artists collaboration.
Robert Fitterman, 2026
