Oil and oil chalk on canvas
Forstbauer/Merkert/Kunisch/Behrens 62.12. Signed and barely legible dated lower right. Signed, titled and inscribed as well as with two arrows indicating the direction on a label on verso. 140 x 81 cm (55,1 x 31,8 in). [JS]

PROVENANCE: Private collection South Germany (acquired directly from the artist in 1962).

At the initiative of his teacher HAP Grieshaber, Stöhrer visited the exhibition "Neue amerikanische Malerei" (New American Painting ) in the Berlin University of Fine Arts in 1958 where he encountered the works of Jackson Pollock an De Kooning. In 1960/61 he began to occupy himself with the “Psychoanalytic Drawings" by Jackson Pollock to which he has access through an American version of the drawings. He discusses questions regarding the expressive methods of Soutine, Bacon and de Kooning with friends. Stöhrer thoroughly examines the question of the immediacy of artistic expression in those years, for instance by studying Hans Prinzhorn‘s book "Bildnerei der Geisteskranken“ (Paintings of Menatly Ill )published in 1922. The landscapes of the painter Chaim Soutine, whom Stöhrer renders homage to with this work, were an important source of inspiration due to their raving, almost hallucinative flow, which Soutine upgrades to impressive psychograms. They became the model for Stöhrer’s both expressive and yet abstract picture language. [JS].