Ohne Titel. 1967.
Oil on canvas.
Signed, dated and titled as well as inscribed "oben" and with a direction arrow on the reverse. 100 x 100 cm (39.3 x 39.3 in). [JS].

• Early work in the characteristic, minimalist Girke style.
• Girke is a master of monochrome painting: while his œuvre around 1960 was still dominated by the non-colors black and white, he had achieved a maximum nuance of white since the late 1960s .
• "Untitled" declares the non-color white in all its shades and levels of expression as the protagonist of the gently modulated composition.
• Through rhythmic structure and nuance, Girke creates a fascinating illusion of three-dimensionality and motion.
• In 2022, the MKM Museum Küppersmühle, Duisburg, honored Girke's œuvre with a major retrospective titled "Raimund Girke. Klang der Stille" (Sound of Silence).

PROVENANCE: Galerie Teufel, Koblenz.
Private collection Baden-Württemberg (acquired from te above in 1971, ever since family-owned).

EXHIBITION: Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, no date (with the label on the stretcher).

"The horizontal stripes stand out against the picture's white surface as they are composed of a lighter zone on top and a shadowed zone underneath. This creates the spatial illusion as if the canvases were curving towards the viewer on the horizontal lines. At the same time, a kind of virtual motion is created on the surface. The distances between the lines vary, so that the body of the painting seems to expand in certain areas and contract in others, comparable to a living, breathing organism. The application with the spray gun allows for the most subtle color gradients, with the white falls onto the canvas as a delicate, diaphanous mist."

Dietmar Elger, Raimund Girke. Malerei, Bonn 1995, p. 66.