(Füssen 1952–2013)
Untitled - 8 parts, 1997, each signed, dated Förg 97, chalk and black gesso on black coloured cardboard, collage, each 60 x 50 cm, framed (8)

The work is registered in the Günther Förg Archive under the number 97P0671

Provenance:
Vera Munro Gallery, Hamburg
Christie’s Amsterdam, 11.4.2017, Lot 20
Private Collection, North-Germany - acquired from the above

“For me today, abstract art is what you see and nothing more.”
In conversation with Thomas Groetz, in:
Günther Förg. Bilder/Paintings 1973-1990, Galerie Hetzler, Berlin 2004.

Günther Förg left behind a multifaceted and complex body of work. During his creative period he was active as a painter, sculptor and also as a photographer. The beginning of the 1990s saw the creation of his first large-format, so-called ‘Window’ and ‘Grid’ paintings, executed on canvas or paper. Förg would fill the image substrate briskly. The geometric structure created in this way would evoke architecture, and also carry the hallmarks of nature and landscape. Architecture in particular influenced and inspired Förg’s entire oeuvre.

The work cycle presented here consists of eight contrasting monochrome collages made of black cardboard and painted briskly in strokes of white chalk and black gesso. Given its characteristic grid lines, the work cycle, dating to 1997, belongs to the so-called ‘Window’ and ‘Grid’ paintings. They show with particular clarity Förg’s engagement with the material and with the pictorial space. Above all, the formal structuring of the pictures plays a major role: the colour that makes them up, its intensity and its style. In the cycle shown here, endless rows of asymmetrically distributed grids, offset through the technique of the collage technique overwhelm the pictorial surface. The juxtaposition of the eight variations makes this body of work an exciting and versatile one in Förg’s complex oeuvre.