The oeuvre of the Düsseldorf artist Konrad Lueg is small yet decidedly progressive. He was born Konrad Fischer but adopted his mother’s maiden name, “Lueg,” as his artist name. Beginning in 1958, he studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art under Karl Otto Götz, a leading figure of German Informalism. Alongside the Germans Karl Otto Götz, Fritz Winter and Emil Schumacher, the leading representatives of this movement in Europe included Jean Fautrier, Emilio Vedova, and Pierre Soulages. This period also coincided with the early years of “ZERO” and the Dutch group “Nul”, whose works rejected not only representational depiction but also any visible painterly gesture. In America, Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting were at their peak. This was when the young Düsseldorf art students Konrad Lueg, Gerhard Richter, and Sigmar Polke took the bold, radical step toward new figuration. Their paintings, mostly based on photographs from advertising and print media, soon caused a sensation under the names “New Realism,” “Capitalist Realism,” or “German Pop.” Legendary and particularly pivotal for this new style of painting was the so-called “Front Yard Exhibition” in February 1964. Konrad Lueg, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Manfred Kuttner drove to the renowned Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal with a selection of their works. There, in the front yard, they spontaneously set up a presentation for gallery owner Rolf Jährling, placing their paintings in the snow and leaning them against the fence or trees. But for at least three of them, this paid off, as Jährling invited Lueg, Polke, and Richter to participate in the legendary exhibition “Neue Realisten” (1964/65). That same year, Düsseldorf gallery owner Alfred Schmela offered Konrad Lueg a solo exhibition, and the galleries Heiner Friedrich in Munich and René Block in Berlin also presented his first solo exhibitions.
Lueg was only twenty-five, and like his fellow nonconformists, he had first encountered early American Pop Art shortly before. Andy Warhol had caused a sensation in New York in 1962 with his first serial painting and his first “Marilyn,” and Roy Lichtenstein had created his first comic-style speech bubble paintings. Provocative, striking, and bold, figurative art was also making a comeback in contemporary painting in Germany, and Konrad Lueg painted his work “Frau” (Woman, 1965) with confidence in large format. Unlike Lichtenstein and Warhol, however, Lueg’s painting did not celebrate comic-book heroes or celebrities; instead, it presented the garishly colorful silhouette of an anonymous, nearly faceless woman carrying a handbag—an ironic, humorous commentary on the German narrow-mindedness of the economic miracle era. “Frau” is also an outstanding example of Lueg’s famous “pattern paintings,” which—executed in part with standard pattern rollers from art supply stores—became his artistic trademark, much like Polke’s grid paintings from the same period. As early as 1967, however, Konrad Lueg switched sides, moving from one of Germany's most progressive artists to a successful gallery owner under his birth name, “Konrad Fischer.” [JS]