Sale: 369 / Post War/ Contemporary Art, June 12. 2010 in Munich Lot 210

 
Rupprecht Geiger - 452/67


210
Rupprecht Geiger
452/67, 1967.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 30,000 / $ 32,400
Sold:
€ 41,480 / $ 44,798

(incl. surcharge)

Oil on canvas
Dornacher/Geiger 434. Signed and titled on the folded canvas. 95 x 80 cm (37,4 x 31,4 in)

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

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 foot-hills 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 water-colors 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. Typical of this period are his dark-colored landscapes in watercolor. 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. One year later Geiger joined up with Baumeister, Matschinsky-Denninghoff and Winter and founded the group "ZEN 49". 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 colorful compositions.

By the end of the 1950s, the process of simplification Geiger embarked on in order to ensure as little distraction as possible from the perception of color was far advanced. 'The variety of abstract forms with their often grotesque contours distracts from color whereas color can emerge unaffected where archetypal forms such as the rectangle and the circle are involved' (Rupprecht Geiger, quoted in: Jürgen Morschel, in: Künstler. Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, Munich 1988/92, p. 10). Simplification of form and a reduced palette did not, however, lead to Constructivist painting. Instead, they made form into a scaffolding for pure color. This is also true of the present work, in which modulated reddish orange is free to develop a vibrant life of its own on a neutral ground. [NB]

He repeatedly showed works at the documenta in Kassel between 1959 and 1977. He gave up working as an architect in 1962 in order to concentrate on his painting. In 1965 Geiger was appointed professor at the academy in Düsseldorf, a post he held until 1976. Geiger was a member of the 'Akademie der Schönen Künste' in Munich from 1982 up until his death in Munich in 2009. In 1987 he was commissioned with the sculpture "Gerundetes Blau" for the cultural centre Gasteig in Munich. With his abstract color compositions Rupprecht Geiger was one of the main representatives of color field painting in Germany. [NB].




210
Rupprecht Geiger
452/67, 1967.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 30,000 / $ 32,400
Sold:
€ 41,480 / $ 44,798

(incl. surcharge)