Sale: 530 / Evening Sale / The Hermann Gerlinger Collection, June 10. 2022 in Munich Lot 52

 

52
Norbert Kricke
Raumplastik, 1958/1960.
Soldered stainless steel rods, on a stainless s...
Estimate:
€ 60,000 / $ 64,800
Sold:
€ 137,500 / $ 148,500

(incl. surcharge)
Raumplastik. 1958/1960.
Soldered stainless steel rods, on a stainless steel plate.
Height: 28.5 cm (11.2 in). Base: 15,5 x 10,5 x 10,5 cm (6,1 x 4,1 x 4,1 in).

• Unique object.
• From the collection of the Swiss steel industrialist Dr. Hans Koenig.
• From the artist's best creative period.
• Kricke's mastery in transforming the line into sculpting is unrivaled.
• Immediately after this sculpture had been completed, Kricke prepared his first grand solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1961
.

We are grateful to Sabine Kricke-Güse, Berlin, for her kind expert advice.

PROVENANCE:
Collection Dr. Hans Koenig, Zollikon/Switzerland (since 1994).

LITERATURE:
Villa Grisebach, Berlin, November 25, 1994, lot 63.
John Matheson, Foundation Collection Dr. Hans Koenig-Metallplastiken, Villa Meier-Severini, Zollikon, April 1997, with illu.

Kricke's artistic work lives from the line, like no other modern sculptor he pursues the theme with the greatest intensity until the line ultimately becomes his trademark. Born in Düsseldorf in 1922, Norbert Kricke studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin under Richard Scheibe and worked as a freelance artist in his hometown from 1947. Materials from the modern construction and steel processing industry replace traditional sculpture in his sculptures. What Karl Otto Götz, Emil Schumacher and K.R.H. Sonderborg created in painting, Norbert Kricke, as one of the few informal sculptors, was able to transform into sculpture. Since 1955, Kricke has found a fundamentally new solution for informal sculpting with his "surface tracks". In a next step, his metal rods then occupy the space, they leave the strict rows of a uniform direction and protrude impetuously from their imaginary axis. Bundles of metal rods soldered together seem to reach out into space on all sides, tapering to the finest ramifications. Like rays of light, Kricke's gleaming creations conquer space, simulating expansion and movement. The apparently filigree instability that gives the impression of floating is achieved with just a few elements. His spatial sculptures, in which the artist masterfully succeeds in making the abstract categories of space and time visually tangible, appear weightless and fragile. Kricke realized the idea of \u8203\u8203 an open sculpture more resolutely than his contemporaries by explicitly including the space in the design of the sculpture. The viewer's gaze should no longer find its focus in the sculpture, but instead be directed from it into the infinity of space. The sculpture thus becomes an artistic instrument that makes it possible to experience space as such and movement in space. In his unique pieces, Kricke merges the tradition of constructivist and futuristic sculpture into an incomparable formal language of quiet beauty. As one of the most important representatives of informal sculpture in Germany, Kricke's oeuvre was not only presented at the documenta several times , but also experienced international recognition in the early 1960s, for example through exhibitions at the 32nd Venice Biennial or in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. [SM]



52
Norbert Kricke
Raumplastik, 1958/1960.
Soldered stainless steel rods, on a stainless s...
Estimate:
€ 60,000 / $ 64,800
Sold:
€ 137,500 / $ 148,500

(incl. surcharge)