Sale: 343 / Post War / Contemporary Art, Dec. 04. 2008 in Munich Lot 604

 
Rupprecht Geiger - E 221 (Komposition mit schwarzem Kreis)


604
Rupprecht Geiger
E 221 (Komposition mit schwarzem Kreis), 1954.
Egg tempera
Estimate:
€ 35,000 / $ 37,800
Sold:
€ 52,460 / $ 56,656

(incl. surcharge)

E 221 (Komposition mit schwarzem Kreis). 1954.
Egg tempera on canvas.
Dornacher/Geiger 164. Signed, dated, titled and with two indications of directions on the stretcher. 80 : 80 cm (31,4 : 31,4 in). Rupprecht Geiger was born in Munich in 1908 as the only child of the painter and graphic artist Willi Geiger. He spent his childhood and his youth in Munich and in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. In 1924 his family moved to Spain for one year where Geiger attended the "Colegio aleman" in Madrid, and accompanied his father on his trips to the Canary Islands and to Morocco. Geiger made his first drawings and watercolours during this period. One year after returning from Spain in 1926, Geiger attended Eduard Pfeiffer's architectural class at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich. He graduated as an architect in 1935 and spent half a year in Rome together with his father. Geiger then worked in a Munich architect's bureau until 1940 when he was sent to the Russian Front. Geiger returned to Germany for a short period in 1942 before his father helped him to get a job as a war painter in the Ukraine. Geiger returned to Munich after the end of the war. His first abstract work was exhibited in 1948 at the "Salon des Réalités Nouvelles" in Paris.

A year after painting E 221, Geiger joined forces with Willi Baumeister, the sculptors Matschinsky-Denninghoff and Fritz Winter to found ZEN 49, a group of artists striving to smooth the way for abstract art in post-war Germany. In a circular written for the group, Geiger puts their agenda as follows: “In abandoning the areas of the limited beauty of certain objects, we are taking a new way towards a limitless, non-representational beauty. Thus we are more likely to succeed in expressing the mysterious currents of nature as they shape the world-view today in terms of a formulaic simile” (quoted in: Geiger. Zeichnung als Licht, exhib. cat. Saarland Museum Saarbrücken 1990, p. 156). This is the beauty that informs Rupprecht Geiger’s pictures in subsequent years, which are notable for the Minimalist handling of form and shaded colour constellations also superbly exemplified by our picture.

Geiger discovered his true style during the 1950s. He integrated the futurist style of the Sixties, which was influenced by space research, into his abstract and colourful compositions. He repeatedly showed works at the documenta in Kassel between 1959 and 1977. In 1965 Geiger was appointed professor at the Akademie in Düsseldorf, a post that he held until 1976. Geiger has been a member of the Akademie der Schönen Künste in Munich since 1982. In 1987 he was commissioned with the sculpture "Gerundetes Blau" for the cultural centre Gasteig in Munich. At present Geiger lives and works in Munich. Rupprecht Geiger's abstract colour compositions make him one of the most important artists of "Farbfeldmalerei" (colour field painting) in Germany. [NB]

PROVENIENZ: Galerie Schmücking, Brunswick.
Private collection Hesse.
AUSSTELLUNG: Zen 49, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware/Ohio, 1956.

Good overall impression. With minor craquelé, more obvious on the centre right margin. Partially minimally rubbed, with isolated tiny colour flakings, partly retouched. Upper left with two minor scratch marks.




604
Rupprecht Geiger
E 221 (Komposition mit schwarzem Kreis), 1954.
Egg tempera
Estimate:
€ 35,000 / $ 37,800
Sold:
€ 52,460 / $ 56,656

(incl. surcharge)