Munich, 31 March, 2014, (kk) – Exploring limits, creating new spaces – that is what both the Argentinian Lucio Fontana as well as his German artist colleague Günther Uecker possess great poise in. The auction of Post War and Contemporary Art in context of the Jubilee Auction at Ketterer Kunst on 6/7 June offers two remarkable works by both masters.

In line with his quest for a new form of spatial art, Lucio Fontana began with his famous canvas slits in 1958. They are brute intrusions into the monochrome surface by means of sharp knife cuts. His "Concetto Spaziale, Attese" from 1959, called up with an estimate of € 500.000-600.000, counts among the early works from the minimalistic "Tagli" group. With these knife wounds Fontana strives to make new dimensions accessible. He says: "My art is all coined by this immaculacy, by the philosophy of nothingness, it is not the nothingness of destruction, but the nothingness of creation (...) and especially the cut (...) does not aim at the image's destruction, on the contrary, it opens up a new dimension beyond the image".(1)

The spatial dislimitation of the artwork is also in the focus of Günther Uecker's creation. While he gets impulses from his ZERO artist colleagues on the one hand, it is Lucio Fontana on the other hand who gives him both practical and theoretic inspiration. Connecting factors can be found in Fontana's manifestos, in which he mentions space-related art and the extension of space on the image area. In this context the object "Hommage à Fontana I" from 1962 (estimate: € 200.000-250.000) is to be understood more than literally, for it is an expression of the examination of Fontana's concepts rendered in Uecker's characteristic style. More impressive works in the jubilee auction come from, among others, artists such as Willi Baumeister, Norbert Bisky, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Otto Dix, Lyonel Feininger, Eberhard Havekost, Carsten Höller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Imi Knoebel, Otto Mueller, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Steven Parrino, Hermann Max Pechstein, Serge Poliakoff and Neo Rauch (see press release dated 24 March, 2014).

Preview:
06/07 May,   Ketterer Kunst               Am Holstenwall 5   20355 Hamburg*
10/11 May,   Galerie Barbara
                    von Stechow                 Feldbergstr. 28   60323 Frankfurt*
17-19 May,   Ketterer Kunst               Malkastenstr. 11   40211 Düsseldorf*
24-30 May,   Ketterer Kunst               Fasanenstr. 70   10719 Berlin*
01-05 June,  Ketterer Kunst               Joseph-Wild-Str. 18   81829 Munich**
                * selected works ** all works

Auction in Munich
                06 June     Modern Classics
                07 June     Post War / Contemporary Artt

(1)transl. of quote after: Bettina Ruhrberg, Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, Munich 1993, p. 3