Driver 2. 2001.
Oil on canvas.
Signed, dated, titled on verso. 130 x 90 cm (51,1 x 35,4 in).

We are grateful to Galerie Gebr. Lehmann, Dresden, for their kind support in cataloging this lot.

PROVENANCE: Galerie Gebr. Lehmann, Dresden (auf dem Keilrahmen mit Stempel).
Privatsammlung Berlin.

EXHIBITION: Eberhard Havekost, Martin Honert - Driver, Galerie Johnen + Schöttle, Cologne, 2001.

LITERATURE: Heiner Bastian, Eberhard Havekost. Benutzeroberfläche / User Interface, Munich 2007, p. 24, no. 3 (with illu. in colors).

After he had completed a mason’s apprenticeship, Eberhard Havekost developed the wish to study painting. The application of the twenty-eight years old at the academy in Düsseldorf failed, so he began to study painting in his hometown Dresden at the art school in 1991. In 1997 he became master student of Ralf Kerbach. The media-shy artist was soon mentioned in one breath with Daniel Richer, Jonathan Meese and Neo Rauch.

As it is the case with many of Havekost’s images, in this picture the observer is also confronted with an unusual section that challenges perception. By first sight many works seem geometrically abstract – such as the other work by the artist offered in this auction – that is, however, a clever optical illusion. By second sight, the moment of realization, the section’s contextualization, placing the part in a whole, is felicitous. In "Driver 2" Havekost transforms wall and side window of a simple trailer into a metaphysic image, that, in contrast to the simple illustration of a trailer, negates reality. Eberhard Havekost is chronicler of a common sense world, that is, on the one hand, characterized by cool anonymity. On the other hand, though, the artist creates an aesthetic that finds expression in painting style and coloring. "Driver 2" is kept in cool, almost monochrome gray tones, with a dark red brown in the right part of the image. The smooth application of the paint, the stroke of the brush hardly showing at all, increases the impression of the artist’s illustration of a meta-reality. With his both intelligent, as well as impressive oeuvre, Eberhard Havekost counts among the most popular German painters.

In 2010 the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt dedicated a solo show to Eberhard Havekost, which documented a new period of creation in his oeuvre. While he was closer to the object in his earlier works, he radicalized his painting, for instance by letting structures of knobbed bark or the creases of a couch appear by first sight appear as abstract landscapes. Havekost‘s paintings are in possession of numerous international collections, such as in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Zurich, Wolfsburg and Lucerne. [KP].