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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mar 12, 2021 | Sotheby's | New York | Contemporary Curated | 143 | $****** - ****** | Very Good | Untitled |
paintings
194.3 x 160 cm (76.5 x 63 in)
acrylic on canvas
Luhring Augustine, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in May 1993.
This work is recorded in the archive of Günther Förg as No. WVF.93.B.0716. We thank Mr. Michael Neff from the Estate of Günther Förg for the information he has kindly provided on this work.
Catalogue Note
One of the most significant German artists of the postwar generation, Günther Förg’s pioneering cross-disciplinary practice questions artistic conventions, which he explored through series of works that attempted to decipher histories, misreadings, and the conflicted relationships surrounding the legacy of modernism’s aesthetics, often returning to themes that preoccupied him throughout the entirety of his career. Transforming color, form, and composition, imitating or reacting against gestures or principles of picture-making that he would push to limitations or extremes and then employ anew.
Förg’s work from the 1990s recalling his Grey Paintings from the 1970s and revisits the monochromatic and straight lines. First executed in 1973 as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Förg’s would continued the series until his death in 2013. Dense, elegant works, the paintings are evidence to the artist’s ever evolving relationship with both monochrome and the investigation of materiality and color. Grounding his practice and laying the foundation for the artist’s entire oevure, these works demonstrate the beginnings of Förg’s lifelong commitment to a conceptual approach to art-making. While the early Grey Paintings resemble Twombly’s chalkboards, the mid-1990s works had become gesturally dense, their execution, tonal complexity, and compositional layering implicitly referenced the breadth of materiality diversity and depth of surface that Förg instigated and explored throughout his practice. The present work is part of a small group of paintings, which refer to a book cover of Paul Klee’s from the 1950s, whose preoccupation with color theory was similarly evident in his work as in Förg’s.
Most immediately resembling the grid-like cross hatching of the artist’s Gitterbilder or Grid Paintings, these late career works make visible the material physicality and textural depth of the 1970s Lead Paintings and the window motif recurrent in Förg’s architectural photography dominating the 1980s. The Grey Paintings from the 1990s remain touchstones of Förg’s artistic practice, uniting a sensual, expressive handling of formal disciplines and geometric structures.
