Sale: 529 / Post War / Contemporary Art, June 10. 2022 in Munich Lot 226

 

226
Rupprecht Geiger
685/74, 1974.
Acrylic on canvas
Estimate:
€ 40,000 / $ 43,200
Sold:
€ 81,250 / $ 87,750

(incl. surcharge)
685/74. 1974.
Acrylic on canvas.
Dornacher/Geiger 664. Signed, twice inscribed with the dimensions and with a dedication on the reverse. Once more signed on the folded canvas and inscribed with the work number "685/74". 140.5 x 140.5 cm (55.3 x 55.3 in).
[AM].
• Privately-owned for more than 30 years.
• The color pink has an exceptional importnace in the painter's oeuvre.
• Rupprecht Geiger is one of the most important artists of the German post-war avant-gard
.

PROVENANCE: Galerie Edith Wahlandt.
Private collection Baden-Württemberg (acquired from the above in 1992).

EXHIBITION: Rupprecht Geiger, Ölbilder und Graphiken von 1950 bis 1982, Fritz-Winter-Haus, Ahlen, February 6 - April 25, 1982, cat. no. 15 (with the exhibition label on the stretcher).

LITERATURE: Pia Dornacher, Julia Geiger: Rupprecht Geiger. Werkverzeichnis. Gemälde und Objekte Architekturbezogene Kunst, p. 240, no. 664, no illu.
"Color, just like light, deserves to be mentioned in one breath with the first rank of elements – fire, water, air, color, light and earth."
(Rupprecht Geiger quoted from. Jürgen Morschel, Künstler. Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, Munich 1988/92, p. 2)

Color as an independent and expressive medium accompanies Rupprecht Geiger in his artistic work throughout his life and gives it great continuity. It becomes the central element and is liberated from form and design. The large-format work "685/74" from 1974 also combines these central elements of Geiger's artistic understanding and can be assigned to the color field modulations of the 1970s.
Born in Munich in 1908 as the only child of the painter and graphic artist Willi Geiger, Rupprecht began painting and drawing in the early 1920s. In 1926 he joined Eduard Pfeiffer's architecture class at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich and in 1935 passed his exams to become an architect, which he continued to do until 1962. After the end of the war he exhibited his first abstract painting in 1948 in the "Salon des Réalistes Nouvelles" in Paris and in 1949 he was a co-founder of the group "ZEN 49" alongside Willi Baumeister and Fritz Winter. In the 1950s he found his way to his abstract and colorful compositions, which were to shape his further work, and in 1959 he exhibited at the documenta in Kassel for the first time.
Rupprecht Geiger knows about the effect color has on the viewer: "I believe in the psychological effect of color on people." (Rupprecht Geiger, quoted from: Pinc kommt! Rupprecht Geiger, Dresden 2017, p. 26). Apparently free-floating color surfaces are masterfully modeled by him with finely graded modulation in a haunting color intensity. Looking at our work, one is almost drawn into the color. It changes before your eyes and is accompanied by an intense glow and constant change. But in our work the color tone is softer, lighter and almost seems to float. Depending on the space and incidence of light, the mood conveyed changes. Different associations such as power, love, energy, warmth and strength play on the seemingly uneventful monochrome canvas. For Rupprecht Geiger, color is not just color, but it unfolds its own sphere of influence, opens up a special level of the spiritual and casts a spell over the viewer. [AW]



226
Rupprecht Geiger
685/74, 1974.
Acrylic on canvas
Estimate:
€ 40,000 / $ 43,200
Sold:
€ 81,250 / $ 87,750

(incl. surcharge)