Gotthard Graubner *

(Erlbach, Vogtland, 1930–2013 Neuss, North Rhine-Westphalia)
Untitled (Color space body), 1984/85, signed and dated Graubner 1984/85 on the reverse, acrylic and oil on canvas over synthetic padding, 40 x 30 x 6 cm
The work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity, Gotthard Graubner Archiv.
The Gotthard Graubner Archiv is including the work in the forthcoming Gotthard Graubner Catalogue Raisonné.

Provenance:
Galerie Löhrl, Mönchengladbach (directly from the artist)
Private Collection, Germany (acquired from the above in 1999)

“My paintings are constructed through the growth of light; they extinguish themselves with the light. Beginning and end are interchangeable. They do not denote a state; they are transition. […] As if of its own accord, colour spreads across the surface. The consistency of the paint determines the movement, the path the colour takes as it makes its way in an unconscious flow. Accumulations occur; the colour-space is set in motion by the pull of concentrations of pigment. The surface breathes. The painter is responsible for this autonomous life. The enactment of the process of painting lies under his control; through this, it is elevated to a process of meditation.”
(Gotthard Graubner, 1963, on the occasion of the exhibition Europäische Avantgarde, Frankfurt 1963; quoted in: Gotthard Graubner, Werke 1959–1969, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 7 November – 7 December 1969)

Gotthard Graubner became widely known to a broader public above all through his non-representational, atmospheric paintings on densely woven fabric supports, which, through the application of multiple translucent layers of colour, develop a corporeal sense of spatiality—the so-called Farbraumkörper (“colour-space bodies”). Deep, luminous tones of pink, orange, and yellow take possession of the pictorial field, causing it to vibrate and breathe; they flare with concentrated intensity at the centre before gradually subsiding along the edges. Graubner’s works reveal the sensuous force of pure colour, liberated from line and form. Just as the process of painting, through the superimposition of layers of colour, may at times have crossed the threshold into meditation, so too is the viewer drawn “into seemingly unknown terrains of imagination and emotional experience”
(Caroline Sommer, “Man muss nur schauen”, in: exh. cat. Gotthard Graubner. Farblicht, Hanover 2003, p. 35)