“Reihe” (Row)

Details

Reiter 350.

Exhibition:

Academy Munich, cat. no. 30;

Günter Fruhtrunk, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover 1969, cat. no. 6, with b/w illus. p. 21, on the reverse with label;

Günter Fruhtrunk. Retrospective, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin/ Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster/ Lenbachhaus, Munich 1993, cat. no. 12, with full-colour illus. Illus. p. 61, on the reverse with label;

Galerie Denise René/Hans Mayer, Krefeld, on the reverse with label.

Provenance:

Wolf-Armin Fruhtrunk (son of the artist);

Private collection, Paris;

Lempertz, Cologne 3 June 1994, lot 634;

Private collection, Hesse;

Ketterer, Munich 10.12.2016, lot 842;

Private property, Hesse.

Description

– Günter Fruhtrunk is the leading representative of concrete art in early West Germany

– Large-format, extremely typical composition of the characteristic motif of stripes with vibrating lines in bright blue

– Created during the important Paris years, recently honoured with an exhibition at the Lenbachhaus Munich (November 2023 – April 2024)

Günter Fruhtrunk is one of the most important representatives of concrete art. He spent the most important years of his artistic development between 1954 and 1967 in Paris, where he found his own style. He had already met Willy Baumeister and Julius Bissier at the end of the 1940s and his turn towards non-objective art had begun. Mentally and physically wounded by the experiences of the Second World War, Fruhtrunk saw abstraction as pointing the way forward, linked to the hope of a universal artistic language that would transcend all national boundaries. In Paris, the young artist sought to join the international avant-garde. He was supported in this endeavour by Sonia Delaunay and Hans Arp, who had already championed geometric abstraction in the 1930s as part of the Abstraction-Création artists’ association. The hub of the network was the well-known gallery owner Denise René. She exhibited Günter Fruhtrunk for the first time in 1957, thereby establishing the artist’s success. The Paris years are characterised by the increasing complexity of the compositions. The painter leaves all narrative and subjectivity behind. He created pictorial structures that would point the way for his overall later work: Complex compositions imbued with clarity that radiate beauty and tranquillity thanks to their harmonious inner order.

Reiter 350.