Günther Uecker

Erker Galerie, St. Gallen
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1991

Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Günther Uecker Eine Retrospektive, 1993

Dieter Honisch, Günther Uecker Eine Retrospektive, München 1993, no. 83, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is warmer and richer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are a few media accretions, light handling marks and short tears scattered throughout, all original and inherent to the artist's working process. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Executed at the height of his mature career, Weisser Schrei (White Scream) stands as a powerful proclomation of Günther Uecker's unique aesthetic language developed over his illustrious career. The intense clustering of nails at the centre appearing to burst from a sudden force, offers a dynamic sense of captured movement, whilst the flashes of white acrylic paint exaggerate the unfolding drama of the angular nails as they spin, fall and rise from a tightly packed core. The shared, poetic effect of the materials both draw and deflect the viewer's eye to the picture plane, through which the nails pierce, where the individual nails and the shadows they throw across and amongst one another result in a sense of their growing autonomy that transcends their otherwise prosaic functionality.

Working on his knees, Uecker would hammer nails rapidly and systematically moving outwards from the centre and spacing the nails at approximately a thumb's width each time. Dieter Honisch has described how the artist worked "at lightning speed in a single, uninterrupted action" (Exhibition Catalogue, Berlin, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Gunther Uecker: Twenty Chapters, 2006, p. 60). Indeed, this energetic work emblematises an incredibly focused action through which the artist's physical presence is immediately felt. The breath-taking vigour of the piece is carefully juxtaposed by the serenity of the monochrome aesthetic.

In 1953 Uecker moved from East to West Berlin and started experimenting with the creative potential of nails whilst a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Uecker became a dominant and influential figure in the 'Zero' group that emerged throughout the 1960s, contributing to Zero's Seventh Evening Exhibition of April 1958. The use of nails for his art was an endeavour to express the purest and most physical sensation of movement and light as a manifestation of unlimited and fresh opportunity in art. Weisser Schrei (White Scream) illuminates Uecker's radical language, where he succeeded in liberating himself from the constraints of formal painting.