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Lot Essay
‘[Lead] already has a presence. Sometimes I would leave the lead in the rain and you would get these amazing oxidised grounds, quite beautiful.’
– Günther Förg
Towering to almost two metres in length, Untitled, 1988, is a majestic example of Günther Förg’s lead series and emblematic of the artist’s incandescent chromatic explorations. Characteristically, Förg has divided the composition into unequal sections of scarlet and clouded blue, and like an abstracted sunset, the red burns brightly above the blue expanse. Manipulating the caustic reaction of acrylic on lead, Förg experimented with patinas on the monumental surface, and the painted veils are a sublime presence. ‘I like very much the qualities of lead’, Förg professed, ‘the surface, the heaviness. Some of the paintings were completely painted, and you only experience the lead at the edges; this gives the painting a very heavy feeling - it gives the colour a different density and weight… I like to react on things, with the normal canvas you often have to kill the ground, give it something to react against. With the metals you already have something - its scratches, scrapes’ (G. Förg, quoted in D. Ryan, Talking Painting, Karlsruhe, 1997). Rife with inconsistencies and undulations revealed through the application of paint, the leaded surface directly challenges the concept of a flat pictorial plane. Although Förg’s paintings seemingly exemplify the purity of Modernist abstraction, he rebelled against such classification, believing instead, that painting should be ‘sensual’ (G. Förg, quoted in D. Ryan, Talking Painting, Karlsruhe, 1997). Untitled is undeniably present and the lead creates a viscerally tactile surface of sharp, primal colour.
– Günther Förg
Towering to almost two metres in length, Untitled, 1988, is a majestic example of Günther Förg’s lead series and emblematic of the artist’s incandescent chromatic explorations. Characteristically, Förg has divided the composition into unequal sections of scarlet and clouded blue, and like an abstracted sunset, the red burns brightly above the blue expanse. Manipulating the caustic reaction of acrylic on lead, Förg experimented with patinas on the monumental surface, and the painted veils are a sublime presence. ‘I like very much the qualities of lead’, Förg professed, ‘the surface, the heaviness. Some of the paintings were completely painted, and you only experience the lead at the edges; this gives the painting a very heavy feeling - it gives the colour a different density and weight… I like to react on things, with the normal canvas you often have to kill the ground, give it something to react against. With the metals you already have something - its scratches, scrapes’ (G. Förg, quoted in D. Ryan, Talking Painting, Karlsruhe, 1997). Rife with inconsistencies and undulations revealed through the application of paint, the leaded surface directly challenges the concept of a flat pictorial plane. Although Förg’s paintings seemingly exemplify the purity of Modernist abstraction, he rebelled against such classification, believing instead, that painting should be ‘sensual’ (G. Förg, quoted in D. Ryan, Talking Painting, Karlsruhe, 1997). Untitled is undeniably present and the lead creates a viscerally tactile surface of sharp, primal colour.