Zwei Augen (für Chillida) (Two Eyes)

Painted in 1991, Zwei Augen (für Chillida) (Two Eyes) recalls the visual world of Eduardo Chillida in A.R. Penck's distinctive visual language. Formed from calligraphic constellations dark of lines, Chillida's boldly outlined eyes fix us with a penetrating gaze. Surrounding them are the pictorial signs and emblems- stick-men, crosses, dashes, spirals - that form Penck's visual vocabulary. Stripped of tonality, the graphically arresting motifs within Zwei Augen (für Chillida) (Two Eyes) lie exposed against a stark white background. They evince a symbolic nature that is suggestive of archetypical representations of the human figure, the elements, and of the experience of looking. Although legible as figures and signs, the marks also have an ambiguity that allows them to resonate with painterly independence. Describing his pictures as a mixture of 'abstract and the concrete' (A.R. Penck, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/penck-west-t03303/text-catalogue-en try [accessed 28th April 2013]), the component signs do not have individual meanings. As well as pertaining to universal experience, they are autonomous abstract forms based on ideas that derive from mathematics, cybernetics and theoretical physics. Like Chillida, Penck placed importance on the negative spaces within an artwork, and did not view space as emptiness. The strong distinction between the figures and signs in Penck's works (usually a dark colour) and ground (usually white) renders their relationship ambiguous - it is the effect that they have together that is so powerful.