Horst Antes
1936

Interieur 1 (Milano). 1963.
Egg and oil tempera on canvas.
Signed, dated and inscribed "entstanden 1963 Antes 8.7.96" on the reverse at a later point. 100 x 70 cm (39.3 x 27.5 in).
On the occasion of the artist’s 90th birthday, the Sprengel Museum in Hanover presents an extensive solo exhibition from April 11 to July 5, 2026. [CH].

• In the early 1960s, Antes developed his iconic cephalopods, usually depicted in profile: a central motif of his artistic oeuvre.
• The paintings from the early 1960s are his most sought-after works on the international auction market: The five highest prices were achieved by works created between 1960 and 1964 (source: artprice.com).
• In 1964, Antes participated in documenta III in Kassel, followed by his participation in the 33rd Venice Biennale (German Pavilion) in 1966.
• Part of a significant private collection in Berlin over the past decades.
• Works by the artist are in many museum collections, including the Busch-Reisinger Museum of the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (MA), the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, the Sprengel Museum, Hanover, and the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.

PROVENANCE: Dr. Paolo Marinotti Collection, Milan.
Galerie Orangerie-Reinz, Cologne (2004).
Berlin/North Rhine-Westphalia art trade.
Private collection, Berlin (acquired from the above in 2005, Ketterer Kunst).

LITERATURE: Katja Szymczak, Horst Antes. Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, vol. 1: 1957–1964, Künzelsau 2020, p. 166, CR no. 1963-39 (with color illustration).
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Ketterer Kunst, Munich, 293rd Auction, 20th-Century Art, May 12, 2005, lot 163.

"At first, I painted the figure in a frontal view. [..] I then painted the figure from the side, and the images changed; I changed. [..] The individual figure is very important to me because I am alone with it. I create something there that I can truly converse with. [..] I don’t take someone who exists; instead, I create someone. [..] The figure confronts the viewer, and vice versa. The figure is a negative form, a stigma; it absorbs and endures color, hatching, thoughts, quotations, time, history, and the conflict with the fickleness of the present; it is a repository that takes in and gives out. I load and unload my figure symbolically, sentimentally, organically, historically; I fill it and empty it with allusions, gestures, thoughts, speculations, desires, and anxieties. I create an image, I make someone into a parable, a partner, a mirror. I multiply myself, assert myself, take possession, recognize myself, and, through myself, something—in snapshots of lasting duration.
[..] In my early paintings, I was concerned only with what lies within the human being; what was outside held no interest for me."
Horst Antes in an interview with Rolf-Gunter Dienst, in: Noch Kunst. Neuestes aus deutschen Ateliers, Düsseldorf 1970, pp. 15f.