Sale: 540 / Evening Sale, June 09. 2023 in Munich Lot 18


18
Katharina Grosse
Ohne Titel, 2008.
Acrylic and sand on canvas
Estimate:
€ 150,000 / $ 165,000
Sold:
€ 279,400 / $ 307,340

(incl. surcharge)
Ohne Titel. 2008.
Acrylic and sand on canvas.
Signed, dated and inscribed with the work number "2008/ 1006 L" on the reverse. Ca. 393 x 500 cm (154.7 x 196.8 in).

• Impressive large-size work in luminous colors.
• The usage of sand creates a special haptical appeal and a fascinating depth effect.
• The year this work was made, the artist had an exhibition at, among others, the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
• Through her innovative techniques and her new approach to color, Katharina Grosse has fundamentally changed painting
.

PROVENANCE: Galerie Nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna.
Private collection Germany (since 2008, acquired directly from the above).

Grosse does not only paint on paper, canvas or other traditional image carriers, she also applies the paint to long fabric structures, objects, entire floors, heaps of soil, lawns, walls and facades. This way she occupies entire rooms and locations artistically, transforming them into over-sized installations through her artistic intervention. Working large-scale, the artist has been questioning the definition of the traditional medium of painting for years with the exuberant color areas that spread in all directions and onto the surrounding architecture, the unusual image carriers, but especially with her unconventional way of applying the paint. At the 1998 Sydney Biennale, Grosse sprayed paint directly onto architectural structures for the first time. In the acknowledged exhibition in Berlin’s art museum Hamburger Bahnhof in 2020/21, she turned lengths of canvas into sculptural structures on which the colors stretch out, crawl onto the floor and take possession of the outside world. Grosse creates her colossal color worlds on architectural installations or actually existing architecture. For her works on canvas, she also prefers huge formats, as the present work delivers impressive proof of. In doing so, she achieves three-dimensionality in a two-dimensional medium through technical tricks in the application of paint, which is just as fascinating as her impressive color installations. The colors, the main protagonists of her art, appear in different states of aggregation, sometimes structured by the brush, sometimes shimmering through, sometimes applied thin like a mist or thick like a crust. The color structures seem to proliferate across the canvas, break through the canvas and conquer the pictorial space. Observers are captivated by the magic of Katharina Grosse's oscillating color world, especially by the fact that the picture is not bordered but open to all sides - the expansion of the color body beyond the actual format seems possible, color spaces seem infinite. Basically, Grosse's painting is always an over-painting. The overlaying color structures, which she achieves by working in layers and with stencils, create spatial depth. In this work from 2008, she creates a three-dimensional effect by adding a haptic component, sand mixed with pigment, to her painting. Clods of color float across the dynamic network of moving lines, showing a strong proximity to graffiti art. Not only the application of paint itself, but also the resulting line-like color structure is strongly reminiscent of this young art form. Her painting has an expansive power and creates pictorial spaces that are different from the spaces of our everyday three-dimensional world. With her innovative techniques and her approach to color, Katharina Grosse changed painting and set a striking example for the development of contemporary art. [SM]



18
Katharina Grosse
Ohne Titel, 2008.
Acrylic and sand on canvas
Estimate:
€ 150,000 / $ 165,000
Sold:
€ 279,400 / $ 307,340

(incl. surcharge)