Gotthard Graubner - Nebel Nabel

Gotthard Graubner

Nebel Nabel
1968

Oil on Perlon on synthetic wadding on canvas. 130 x 125 cm. Signed, dated and titled 'Gotth. Graubner 1968 nebel nabel' verso on canvas. - Traces of studio and minor traces of age.

“The act of painting can be understood here as an act of conception in the original sense, as the begetting of life. We can view it as a paradigm for that mysterious artistic event, when material that is factually inert - pigment, metal, clay or stone - is transformed in the hands of the artist and so makes a statement, makes sense.
From 1960 on, Graubner developed a form capable of providing answers to his own specific questions. While using absorbent sponges, he realizes that these can not only be used as tools for applying paint, they can become the work itself: an appropriate material for the energy of colour to develop in. This Farbraumkörper (colour-space body), as the artist calls it, is a layer of absorbent wadding that is stuffed between the stretcher and the canvas. In this way a carrier for paint can be formed, which can absorb it and allow its true qualities to unfold unimpeded. From that point on, Graubner's painting has developed within the coordinates of colour, body and space.” (Heinz Liesbrock, Embodying Color, in: Gotthard Graubner, Painting, exh.cat. Kunstmuseum, Lichtenstein, Düsseldorf 2010, p.79)

Provenance

Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia; Galerie Michael Haas, Berlin (1994); private collection, Germany