Günther Förg

Galerie Lelong, Zurich
Private Collection, Germany
Acquired from the above by the present owner

This work is in excellent. The apparent mild surface undulations and intermittent irregularities to the top and bottom overturn edges are an inherent result of the artist's process and choice of metal media. There is a minute loss toward the upper left corner approximately 3 inches in from the left edge, as well as another pinpoint loss along the top edge approximately 2 ¼ inches in from the left corner. There is a ¾ inch vertical line of pigment loss along the forward rim of the left overturn edge, approximately 2 inches up from the lower left corner. There is a thin diagonal indentation that is noticeable under close inspection, extending ¾ inches in from the left overturn edge at center, which likely dates from the time of execution. Under ultraviolet light there are no apparent restorations. This work is not framed.
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Displaying an astonishingly sparse embrace of the idiosyncratic visual properties of discerningly selected materials, Günther Förg’s breathtaking Untitled is an exemplary exponent of the artist’s nuanced extension of the modernist tendency, declaring an ultimate aesthetic of purity.  Boasting an intense corporeal charisma, this work stands at the apogee of the artist’s most significant body of work – his lead paintings – which call upon the authentic planarity of color field painting whilst establishing an altogether new architectural territory for the medium. Through a strident annunciation of unadulterated pigments and revelry in the unique coarseness of their interaction with unprimed lead, Förg re-oriented the dialogue for minimalist painting and situated himself amongst the most significant artists of the Twentieth Century.

Studying at The Academy of Fine Art Munich from 1973- 76, Förg’s early career was dominated by black monochromes, taking influence from the Suprematist ideals of Kazimir Malevich whose Black Square (1915) provided unequivocal inspiration for all subsequent explorations of abstraction. Yet Förg’s particular use of acrylic with the addition of a translucent grey, offered a peculiar surface effect: from the genesis of his practice the artist moved from the spiritualistic approach to abstract art, founded with Malevich, towards a formal focus on the properties of materials.  Following the unexpected death of his artistic confidant Blinky Palermo in 1977, Förg decidedly took upon himself the legacy of European Minimal Art, becoming its greatest proponent.

Paramount to the present work is an exaltation of the elemental ontology of the materials. As highlighted by fellow German painter Albert Oehlen, Förg  “creates sublime works from something that is already sublime.” (Albert Oehlen quoted in Andreas Schlaegl, ‘Günther Förg: Galerie Max Hetzler’, Frieze, Spring 2012) In this seminal series the artist creates his painterly support by wrapping sheets of lead around wooden struts, ensuring a unique material presence to the work. As an architectural object that supports the reaction of paint upon its surface, Förg arrived at a most extreme minimal abstraction in works such as Untitled.  He thus laid to rest the illusionistic ‘window to the world’ that had long been the cornerstone idea of figurative painting. As the artist elucidated: “I like very much the qualities of lead – 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 color a different density and weight. In other works the materials would be explicitly visible as grounds. I like to react on things, with the normal canvas you have to kill the ground, give it something to react against. With the metals you already have something – its scratches, scrapes…” (Günther Förg in conversation with David Ryan, Karlsruhe, 1997, quoted in David Ryan, Talking Painting: Dialogue with Twelve Contemporary Abstract Painters, London, 2002, p. 77)

Förg’s simple compositional formula here provides a confrontation between two powerfully emotive primary hues – the expansive enigma of an infinite blue and the heat of an impassioned red – with a deep saturation that resonates into its surround.  With the dispersion of these elemental colors the artist evokes the design-considered purism of Piet Mondrian and De Stijl. At a later end of abstraction, the dispersion of color into space and sense of architectural statement recalls Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. Yet our ability to absorb the spiritually enveloping capacities of the work are compromised by Förg’s rational insistence on raw materiality.  Utilizing the unique properties of a base element of the periodic table, the surface becomes an enlivened plateau of intriguing texture through natural oxidation, heightened by gestural brushstrokes.  Whilst other contemporary artists such as Anselm Kiefer used lead for its symbolic value, Förg relished in the pure formal physicality of the naturally coarse patinas, posing himself as both artist and alchemist: “Sometimes I would leave the lead in the rain and you would get these amazing oxidized grounds, quite beautiful.” (Günther Förg quoted in Ibid., p. 77) With comparable examples housed in the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, it is through the seminal lead paintings that institutions continue to look back at Förg’s profound, and tragically curtailed, contribution to the history of minimal abstract painting.