(Erlbach, Vogtland, 1930–2013 Neuss, North Rhine-Westphalia)
Untitled, 1968, signed, dated on the reverse Gotth Graubner 1968, oil on Perlon over foam on canvas, 89.5 x 70 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, Germany - acquired at Kunsthaus Lempertz Cologne, 5. December 2001, Lot 772

We are grateful to the Estate of Gotthard Graubner for the kind assistance.

“My images act as a mirror for light. A source of light, a filter, a trampoline for light. Light is thrown back from the taut skin of the images; it presses underneath the skin; awakes the colours; saturates itself with them; fills voids and allows the pulse of the colours to press outward through the skin.”
Gotthard Graubner, “Zauber des Lichts”, Recklinghausen 1967

“People can experience colour through its nuances,” writes Gotthard Graubner in 1969, reflecting on painting. For him, the exposure value of an emphatically, tangibly embodied colour is of the greatest importance, and not the refraction of actual light on material surfaces. Gotthard Graubner’s “colour drawing” ensured that he was the subject of attention early on, and enabled him to exhibit his works alongside the ZERO artists.
(Katharina Schmidt in: Gotthard Graubner, Farblicht, exhibition catalogue Kestern Gesellschaft, Hanover, 2003, p. 14)

Beyond representationalism, Graubner adheres to the relationship between background and figure and places floating, abstract, coloured forms in front of monochrome backgrounds. These forms are only set apart from the background by nuances: weightlessness and stillness seem to dominate these works. From the very beginning, Graubner viewed painting as a coloured organism; he shapes it from the material, and adheres to the polarity of cold and warm values in this regard.A pictorial form arose from the instrumental employment of foam; the working tool became the work. The space that Gotthard Graubner creates with his pictorial objects is anything but an illusion of space. The coloured surface is contained within a rectangular frame, thereby forming a field of diffusion. This varies hugely depending on the strength of the foam and the tension of the gauze fabric. If the space inflates to form a “cushion”, the body of colour itself becomes an object. Covered with the gauze veil, it triggers a wide range of reflections.

The opaque works from the period around 1968 belong to Graubner’s experimental “Nebelräume” [Fog Spaces]. The onlooker enters an impenetrable, opaque physical condition, which is further emphasised by means of the Perlon fabric stretched over this work; one finds oneself virtually in the work and is enveloped by the materiality of the image, which engages one’s visual sense like a realist painting, without, however, embodying fog or substantiating it. The pictorial fields liberate themselves from the material context; they become aesthetic objects which renounce two-dimensionality in favour of a sculptural quality, forming an analogy to the corporeal experience of the viewer. (Gotthard Graubner, Malerei, Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne 1995)

The opaque areas which surround the foam bulge reflect more light than the edge areas. The covered voids store light and only release it with a certain delay, which varies depending on their depth – the “images act as a mirror for light. A source of light, a filter, a trampoline for light.” 

Provenance:
Private Collection, Germany - acquired at Kunsthaus Lempertz Cologne, 5. December 2001, Lot 772

We are grateful to the Estate of Gotthard Graubner for the kind assistance.

“People can experience colour through its nuances,” writes Gotthard Graubner in 1969, reflecting on painting. For him, the exposure value of an emphatically, tangibly embodied colour is of the greatest importance, and not the refraction of actual light on material surfaces. Gotthard Graubner’s “colour drawing” ensured that he was the subject of attention early on, and enabled him to exhibit his works alongside the ZERO artists.
Katharina Schmidt in: Gotthard Graubner, Farblicht, exhibition catalogue Kestern Gesellschaft, Hanover, 2003, p. 14

Beyond representationalism, Graubner adheres to the relationship between background and figure and places floating, abstract, coloured forms in front of monochrome backgrounds. These forms are only set apart from the background by nuances: weightlessness and stillness seem to dominate these works. From the very beginning, Graubner viewed painting as a coloured organism; he shapes it from the material, and adheres to the polarity of cold and warm values in this regard. A pictorial form arose from the instrumental employment of foam; the working tool became the work. The space that Gotthard Graubner creates with his pictorial objects is anything but an illusion of space. The coloured surface is contained within a rectangular frame, thereby forming a field of diffusion. This varies hugely depending on the strength of the foam and the tension of the gauze fabric. If the space inflates to form a “cushion”, the body of colour itself becomes an object. Covered with the gauze veil, it triggers a wide range of reflections.

The opaque works from the period around 1968 belong to Graubner’s experimental “Nebelräume” [Fog Spaces]. The onlooker enters an impenetrable, opaque physical condition, which is further emphasised by means of the Perlon fabric stretched over this work; one finds oneself virtually in the work and is enveloped by the materiality of the image, which engages one’s visual sense like a realist painting, without, however, embodying fog or substantiating it. The pictorial fields liberate themselves from the material context; they become aesthetic objects which renounce two-dimensionality in favour of a sculptural quality, forming an analogy to the corporeal experience of the viewer.
(Gotthard Graubner, Malerei, Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne 1995)

The opaque areas which surround the foam bulge reflect more light than the edge areas. The covered voids store light and only release it with a certain delay, which varies depending on their depth – the “images act as a mirror for light. A source of light, a filter, a trampoline for light.”

“My images act as a mirror for light. A source of light, a filter, a trampoline for light. Light is thrown back from the taut skin of the images; it presses underneath the skin; awakes the colours; saturates itself with them; fills voids and allows the pulse of the colours to press outward through the skin.”
Gotthard Graubner, “Zauber des Lichts”, Recklinghausen 1967