Cornelius Tittel has wanted to make the world's most beautiful art magazine since he was thirteen years old, rummaging through his uncle's garage and discovering dusty copies of every German art publication printed after the Second World War. In 2015, he got his chance. Blau launched as a German-language art journal, and from the start it aimed higher than most publications dare: not merely to cover art but to be an art object in its own right.
Now published twice yearly as Blau International, the magazine has expanded from its German roots into a worldwide publication that the late Peter Lindbergh compared to a favourite restaurant where you want to order every single dish. The editorial mix is scintillating and deliberately eclectic: studio visits with the most influential artists of the present, exclusive literary contributions from writers like Peter Handke, Hanya Yanagihara, and Julian Barnes, portraits by star photographers like Jamie Hawkesworth, and fashion spreads styled by Marie Chaix. It is simultaneously a coffee-table magazine and a collector's item — a publication that understands that in the art world, the container is part of the content.
Blau International occupies a particular niche: it is too literary to be dismissed as a fashion-adjacent glossy, too visually lavish to be mistaken for an academic journal, and too eclectic to fit neatly into any single category. It covers the art worlds of today and yesterday with equal curiosity, and it does so with a production quality that makes every issue feel like something you should keep rather than recycle. For Tittel, that was always the point. The world's most beautiful art magazine may or may not exist, but Blau International is making a very serious argument for the title.
Explore Blau International at <a href="https://blfrequency.com/" target="\_blank">blfrequency.com