GÜNTHER UECKER | Sandinsel (Sand Island)

Galerie Orangerie-Reinz, Cologne Private Collection, Germany

Dorotheum, Vienna, 19 May 2010, Lot 455

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Venice, XXXV Biennale di Venezia, Padiglione tedesco: Lenk, Mack, Pfahler, Uecker, June - October 1970, n.p., no. 280, illustrated Essen, Museum Folkwang; and Warsaw, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Günther Uecker, February - May 1971

Dieter Honisch, Uecker, Stuttgart 1983, p. 220, no. 665, illustrated

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is deeper and richer in the original and the illustration fails to fully convey the texture of the sand. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Exhibited at Günther Uecker’s landmark exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1970, Sandinsel (Sand Island) is a work of sensual plasticity, organic form, material precision, and art-historical significance. Having employed the nail as his prime compositional element since the late 1950s, Uecker had truly mastered its use and pictorial effect by 1970, the year of the present work’s execution. When it made its debut at the 35^th Venice Biennale in 1970, together with works by Thomas Lenk, Heinz Mack and Georg Karl Pfahler, this painting was part of an installation that marked a radical and decisive moment for German art on the world stage. Responding to the societal upheavals at the end of the 1960s, the works at the German Pavillion marked a shift away from the hard-edged formalism of the previous decade towards more natural forms that visually and psychologically responded to a new relation between art and society. Freed from previous structural and cultural constraints, Uecker’s new work purported a greater evocative dimension deeply rooted in the human condition and responsive to the fluid forms of nature. The curator of the German Pavilion in 1970, Dieter Honisch, aptly described this exceptional synthesis by pointing out that “Uecker brings together reflection and plasticity to the extent that he tries to produce works of art which can be understood as tools for thought processes” (Dieter Honisch cited in: Exh. Cat., Venice, XXXV Biennale di Venezia, Padiglione tedesco: Lenk, Mack, Pfahler, Uecker, 1970, n.p.). In Sandinsel, the shape of an island emerges from a composition of nails floating amidst a sea of sand. In its powerful juxtaposition of industrial and natural material summoned to take lyrical form, the present work is not only a masterful example of Uecker’s iconic nail reliefs but also references the artist’s own upbringing on the German peninsula of Wustrow in the Baltic Sea. Growing up amidst the brackish lagoons along the coast of Mecklenburg, Uecker remarked: “The inspiration for my work comes from nature – my father was a farmer and I still believe our purpose in life is to bring the fruit from the earth” (Günther Uecker cited in: Matthew Wilcox, ‘Examining the scars of history with Günther Uecker’, Apollo Magazine, 11 February 2017, online). When Uecker was chosen to represent Germany at the Venice Biennale of 1970, the artist was at the zenith of his career: he had been one of the core members of the radical ZERO movement and, alongside Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, Uecker had exhibited at documenta 3 in 1964. Reflecting on Uecker’s works exhibited in Venice, curator Dieter Honisch wrote: “In a three month spell of intensive work Uecker has created a series of 11 reliefs for Venice [including Sandinsel], which can be regarded as the sum of his previous efforts: regular and irregular fields, spirals, island and plantation shapes, long, short, driven-in and upside down nails, sand and rope are used. The complete repertoire is there. Yet this series is still something new. This is clear when it is compared with the white picture of 1959, which is also in the exhibition. In comparison with the later ones the earlier nail field seems much more abstract, as if conforming to a secret orthodoxy and geometrically frozen in shock caused by the newly discovered spatial form. The later fields, on the other hand, are more spontaneously and yet more accurately composed. Uecker also reaches out into the actual space much more clearly with these. One is conscious of the enormous experience and assurance which Uecker has attained in the intervening period, but also of a psychic and physical presence which belongs exclusively to the peak period of a life’s work” (Ibid.). In Sandinsel, Uecker uses the nail as a symbol for societal reconstruction in the post-war era and appropriates it to create geographical shapes suffused with light and shadow. It is in this powerful juxtaposition of stasis and movement that the artist demonstrates Honisch’s observations of new spatial forms found in the works of this particular period.

Since creating his first nail reliefs, Uecker strived to overcome the compositional restrictions imposed by abstract painting by reverting to the most primal and elemental facets of visual perception: light, shadow, and movement. As part of the innovative ZERO group, Uecker regarded the nail as the perfect medium to express the movement's concerns. As stated by the artist: “[The nail is] the ideal object with which to model light and shadow – to make time visible… It protrudes as a tactile feeler from the flat surface, much like a sundial” (Günther Uecker cited in: Alexander Tolnay, Ed., Günther Uecker Twenty Chapters, Ostfildern-Ruit 2006, p. 72). Powerfully exploring a metaphysical suggestion of space, Sandinsel extends the sculptural portent of painting while demonstrating a compositional and material sensitivity that poetically corresponds with nature and its organic shapes.