Sale: 534 / Contemporary Art Day Sale, Dec. 09. 2022 in Munich Lot 112

 

112
Rupprecht Geiger
OE 260, 1956.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 50,000 / $ 54,000
Sold:
€ 93,750 / $ 101,250

(incl. surcharge)
OE 260. 1956.
Oil on canvas.
Dornacher/Geiger 203. Verso of the stretcher signed, dated, titled and inscribed with the dimensions. 120 x 90 cm (47.2 x 35.4 in).
Verso with another depiction that was not completed.
• Expressive painting by the important German representative of Color Field Painting.
• Subtly moduled early color field, particularly fascinating for the gentle oscillation between red and blue values.
• For the first time on the international auction market (source: artprice.com).
• Rupprecht Geiger's paintings are in many renowned collections, among others, in the Nationalgalerie Berlin, the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Lenbachhaus Munich
.

We are grateful to Ms Julia Geiger, Geiger Archive, Munich, for her kind support in cataloging this lot.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Southern Germany (since 1986, Galerie Wilbrand, Cologne).

EXHIBITION: Große Kunstausstellung München, Haus der Kunst, June 7 - September 15, 1957, cat. no. 892 (with the exhibition label on the reverse).
Quadriennale Nazionale d'Arte di Roma, Arte Tedesca dal 1905 ad Oggi, Palazzo della Esposizioni, Rome / Palazzo della Permanente, Milan, December-March 1957/58, cat no. 63 (with the exhibition label on the reverse).

"Red ist beautiful. Red is life, energy, virility, power, love, warmth. Strength. Red makes high. With its abilty to stimulate, it has a powerful function. Red is within the spectrum of the sunlight. Look into the fiery red setting sun, It'll give you strength for the next day.“ (Rupprecht Geiger, quoted from: Cornelia Gockel, Rupprecht Geiger zum 100. Geburtstag, in: Kunstform, vol. 190, 2008, p. 365)

The colors red and blue are undoubtedly among the protagonists of Rupprecht Geiger's painting. While they increasingly appeared isolated from one another in his paintings from around 1960, the artist frequently used them together in the 1950s. In this context, Geiger created his first oil paintings as of 1955, while he had previously preferred to use tempera paint. Hence the present work from 1956 is one of the painter's early depictions in this medium. As a characteristic feature of his paintings from these years, Geiger renders a clear division of surfaces with finely modulated color gradients. Even at the beginning of abstraction in his paintings, Geiger incorporated visual impressions from nature into his works, which he expressed through atmospheric color moods. In this context, the artist said in 1949: "The abstract forms constructed in these pictures are intended to serve as a skeleton or scaffolding, in order to revive the color moods experienced in the natural landscape." (Rupprecht Geiger quoted from Petra Giloy-Hirtz [ed.], Rupprecht Geiger, Ostfildern-Ruit 1994, p. 94) This source of inspiration can also be felt in our work, as it explains the subtle effects of light and mood values \u8203\u8203 that we experience when we look at it. On Geiger's painterly path, which ultimately led him to the purely monochrome expressiveness of color, this work is an extraordinary, early climax in which the artist combined the principles of his painting with explicit stringency and already hints at future developments. [AM]



112
Rupprecht Geiger
OE 260, 1956.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 50,000 / $ 54,000
Sold:
€ 93,750 / $ 101,250

(incl. surcharge)