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拍品專文
Born in 1905 in Germany, Bauhaus educated, banned by the National Socialists for producing degenerate art, drafted and taken as prisoner of war to Siberia, Fritz Winter reached his mature artistic period in the mid-1950s to 1960s. His paintings from this period are often compared to works of abstract expressionists such as Mark Rothko and Ernst Wilhelm Nay. However, due to his own particular approach, his by then recluse nature and the enduring influence from his Bauhaus years, established his own place in post-war German painting.
During his time at the Bauhaus art school in the inter-war Weimar Republic, he studied under Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Oskar Schlemmer – setting the foundations to his career in painting. Following the establishment of the National Socialist regime in 1933, Winter quickly fell into the disgrace of the new government, his work banned and later purged from German museums. In 1939 the artist was drafted into the German army, taken as a prisoner of war and detained in Siberia until 1949. On his return to Europe, Winter resumed painting in a more colourful palette and embraced prevailing avant-garde trends toward abstraction. In 1955, gaining professional recognition he started a teaching position at the Kunsthochschule Kassel in Kassel – an increasingly relevant city in the German art scene (with the documenta I art fair established there).
From 1961 onwards he began using background colours as the primary subject in his paintings. We see many colourful rectangles that bleed into one another irregularly as in the present lot Garten für W. In some paintings, whilst remaining fully abstract, he reintroducing certain contrasts between fore-and background, as seen in Der Osterbaum (lot 34), where a white background is met with black and brown strokes and light blotches of colour. Here he distinguishes himself from Rothko, who believed in the suggestive and transcendental quality of colour alone. Winter on the other hand explored the formal possibilities of colour in creating compositions, and retained ownership in the creation process. And whereas Nay’s starting points were the circle and primary colours, Winter worked with a subdued palette, specifically favouring the colour brown which he took the time to mix and produce himself. Echoing Klee’s colour theories, Winter has really explored the qualities of colour as a surface in its own right.
During his time at the Bauhaus art school in the inter-war Weimar Republic, he studied under Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Oskar Schlemmer – setting the foundations to his career in painting. Following the establishment of the National Socialist regime in 1933, Winter quickly fell into the disgrace of the new government, his work banned and later purged from German museums. In 1939 the artist was drafted into the German army, taken as a prisoner of war and detained in Siberia until 1949. On his return to Europe, Winter resumed painting in a more colourful palette and embraced prevailing avant-garde trends toward abstraction. In 1955, gaining professional recognition he started a teaching position at the Kunsthochschule Kassel in Kassel – an increasingly relevant city in the German art scene (with the documenta I art fair established there).
From 1961 onwards he began using background colours as the primary subject in his paintings. We see many colourful rectangles that bleed into one another irregularly as in the present lot Garten für W. In some paintings, whilst remaining fully abstract, he reintroducing certain contrasts between fore-and background, as seen in Der Osterbaum (lot 34), where a white background is met with black and brown strokes and light blotches of colour. Here he distinguishes himself from Rothko, who believed in the suggestive and transcendental quality of colour alone. Winter on the other hand explored the formal possibilities of colour in creating compositions, and retained ownership in the creation process. And whereas Nay’s starting points were the circle and primary colours, Winter worked with a subdued palette, specifically favouring the colour brown which he took the time to mix and produce himself. Echoing Klee’s colour theories, Winter has really explored the qualities of colour as a surface in its own right.