Beschreibung:

Günther Uecker Mutation 2006 Nails on painted wood. 200 × 150 x 16 cm (78 3/5 x 59 x 6 2/5 in). Signed, titled and dated ‘Günther Uecker Mutation 2006’ on the reverse. This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
Provenance Galeria Dorothea Van Der Koelen, Mayence Catalogue Essay As a pivotal member of the post-war Zero art movement, German artist Günther Uecker revolutionized art by using nails to explore the purest and most physical sensation of light and movement. Expressing a new and infinite possibility in art, Uecker, like the Italian Lucio Fontana who invaded the pictorial space by incising it, liberated himself from the formal constraints of traditional painting. Instead of applying paint to canvas, Uecker hammered nails into a wooden monochromatic support creating a relief field of constantly undulating and shifting movement. The monochrome composition allows the nails to create patterns of shadow across the surface, responding tothe light in the room but also seeming to change in relation to the viewer’s own position. The nailed picture became the antithesis of the painted picture; it allowed Uecker to explore the articulation of light through the shadows created by the nails, the unchanging ritual of hammering and the violation of taboo surfaces. The present lot is a monumental recent work in which the tightly packed nails are each inclined at such steep angles that a swirling vortex is created drawing the viewer into its epicentre. The powerful energy that emanates from the work reflects the desire of Uecker, and his fellow Zero artists, to create something new and extraordinary from such familiar ordinary, banal objects. Read More