Fritz Winter's image world is always fascinating, deep and moving. Trained as a mining electrician, he applied at the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1927 and was a student of Paul Klee until he received his Bauhaus diploma in 1930. He then worked for the Russian sculptor Naum Gabo in Berlin, set out to visit important cultural centers in the Netherlands, France and Italy, and kept in touch with artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, whom he visited several times. From the beginning, Winter devoted himself to biomorphic forms, which he abstracted in drawings, watercolors and large-scale compositions against mostly dark backgrounds. There are lines, circles, ellipses and surfaces that amalgamate in wondrous proliferations, into micro- and macrocosms. The year 1933 also marked the beginning of difficult times for Winter, too. He came up against the limitations with large-scale compositions, non-representational crystal and light images, earth and landscape images. Winter moves organic and inorganic forms over papers and canvases, giving them romantic sounding titles such as "„Vor der Nacht“ (Before the Night), "Verschneiter Tag“ (Snowy Day), "Aufbruch der Erde“ (Dawn of the Earth), "Sich bildendes Licht zwischen den Steinen“ (Light Forming Between the Stones), "Aus der Atmosphäre“ (From the Atmosphere) , “Im Unendlichen“ (In Infinity), “Metamorphose“ (Metamorphosis) and “Triebkräfte der Erde“ (Driving Forces of the Earth)!

Drafted into military service in 1929, he served most of his time on the Eastern Front. Winter continued his studies of form in abstraction, in small format, bound in diaries, like Franz Marc once did. Winter is familiar with Marc’s sensitive "Skizzen aus dem Feld” (Sketches from the Field), and he intensively studied the work of the artist who had fallen in combat in 1916. A serious injury allowed Winter to spend his time of recovery in his house in Dießen on Ammersee from December 1943 to February 1944: The extensive series of these mysterious, dream-like worlds, the “Driving Forces of the Earth” was literally created in a frenzy. The art historian Werner Haftmann sees the series “Triebkräfte” (Driving Forces) in line with the “Schöpfungsgleichnisse” (Parables of Creation) by Franz Marc or with Paul Klee and confirms this right away: “In his last work - the sketches from the field – Franz Marc cogitated the genesis of the cosmos, the life of creation and the driving forces behind a permanently changing nature. This remained unfinished. In this case, and under strangely similar human conditions - Fritz Winter enters the stage. Because the historical location of his series can be best understood as the continuation and completion of what Franz Marc began in the last sketchbook from the field. ”(Haftmann, Triebkraft der Erde, Munich 1957, p. 48).
And in a lecture in Bern as early as in 1951, Haftmann quoted from the artist’s diary on the colors: “Great findings do not have bright colors, they are either black or white or gray. The bright colors belong to the sexes of the earth. I'm happy to be red and yellow, but I long for gray, the infinite. ”((Haftmann, Skizzenbuch zur Kultur der Gegenwart, München 1960, p. 188). In the years before the war Winter experimented with geometrical-crystalline forms that were very different from the dark images. These gems were created on a pile of typewriter paper, and were later summarized under the title "Triebkräfte der Erde" (Driving Forces of the Earth). Means were scarce everywhere during the war, and Winter had no access to better painting material. In a creative frenzy that overcame all adverse circumstances - in addition to the limited work material, Winter was also physically constrained by his injuries - he at times worked on several works at once. He soaked the leaves with an oil-based emulsion. Paper that had received such treatment became a parchment-like structure that supported the lucid effects of the forms that Winter strove for in these compositions. In a monotype-like process, the background was designed in earthy tones reminiscent of lichen and moss and is common to all leaves in this series. On a second level, Winter placed dark forms on the amorphous background and adds translucent segments. The dark-toned coloring underlines the composition’s mysterious aura, which is broken up by glistening white crystalline structures. An imaginary light source brings them out of the dark. Winter used stencils in order to sharply separate the light and dark elements from one another and to create an image space determined by light and shadow. In the sense of the spiritual in art, it penetrates the pure material form of things and makes the essential, the inner core, visible. He reveals our own new universe between an upper and lower world, brings light like a creative energy as a symbol for hope and a new beginning in dark times. The primal force of nature to arise again and again from within itself is Winter's inexhaustible source of inspiration. Winter repeatedly expressed its growth in the dark and its striving towards light in manifold variations in the series "Triebkräfte der Erde“, which is considered Fritz Winter's key work and is one of the artist's most sought-after works on the auction market.