About the work
"Even in Gotthard Graubner's early paintings and gouaches, it is clear that the artist's intentions focus exclusively on the color itself. The special, almost immaterial effect of these paintings lies in the subtlety of the paint application, whereby the paint is laid on top of each other in several layers, giving the impression of a strangely floating, flickering, diffuse spatiality. Graubner later used absorbent materials such as sponges, cushions etc. instead of canvas and paper as a painting surface. The absorbency of the material he used made it necessary to repeat the application of paint several times, in which the artist proceeded with extreme subtlety. This results in pictorial objects that Gotthard Graubner himself describes as "Loaf of Colour", i.e. color itself becomes spatially tangible."
Quelle: Maria Engels, in: Aspekte der gegenwärtigen Kunst in Nordrhein-Westfalen (Katalog zur Dauerausstellung des Kultusministeriums in der ehemaligen Reichsabtei Korneliusmünster.) 1984 ff., p. 64
About the artist
born 1930 in Erlbach, Vogtland
died 2013 in Düsseldorf
Gotthard Graubner studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Berlin in 1947/48, at the Kunstakademie Dresden from 1948 to 1952 and at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1954 to 1959. In 1965, he began teaching at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Hamburg, where he became a professor in 1969. From 1976 to 1998, he was Professor of Fine Art Painting at the Düsseldorf State Academy of Art. In 2009, he was made an honorary member of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
"It is by no means an exaggeration to describe Gotthard Graubner's oeuvre as a revelation of color. Graubner's artistic interest resisted the illustrative. Born in Erlbach in Saxony, the artist was saturated with the politically motivated illustrations of the GDR. It was not until 1954, after studying fine arts in Dresden and Berlin, that he left the GDR and transferred to the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf. As a student of Georg Meistermann, Graubner followed his urge for abstraction and its exploration in color. The subject matter of his works developed in such a way that he was solely concerned with color and its mode of representation and effect. Accordingly, color is not a subordinate means of visualization, but the sole protagonist. Color, according to Graubner, has always been enough of a theme for him. (Gotthard Graubner in a conversation in 1975, quoted from Werner Hofman (ed.) "Gotthard Graubner", Hamburg 1975, p. 86) His understanding of colour strongly contradicts the categorization of colors and their limited form."
Text: Galerie Ludorff, Neuerwerbungen Herbst 2023, p. 30