504/68. 1968.
Acrylic on canvas.
Dornacher/Geiger WV 479. Signed on stretcher as well as with work number, dimensions and arrow indicating the direction. 100 x 105 cm (39,3 x 41,3 in).

PROVENANCE: Private collection North-Rhine Westphalia (acquired in the 1970s).
Private collection Southern Germany.

Rupprecht Geiger was born in Munich in 1908 as the only child of the painter and graphic artist Willi Geiger. He spent his childhood and his youth in Munich and in the foot-hills of the Bavarian Alps. In 1924 his family moved to Spain for one year where Geiger attended the "Colegio aleman" in Madrid and accompanied his father on his trips to the Canary Islands and to Morocco. Geiger made his first drawings and water-colors during this period. One year after returning from Spain, in 1926, Geiger attended Eduard Pfeiffer's architectural class at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich. He graduated as an architect in 1935 and spent half a year in Rome together with his father. Geiger then worked in a Munich architect's bureau until 1940 when he was sent to the Russian Front. Typical of this period are his dark-colored landscapes in watercolor. Geiger returned to Germany for a short period in 1942 before his father helped him to get a job as a war painter in the Ukraine. Geiger returned to Munich after the end of the war. His first abstract work was exhibited in 1948 at the "Salon des Réalités Nouvelles" in Paris. One year later Geiger joined up with Baumeister, Matschinsky-Denninghoff and Winter and founded the group "ZEN 49". Geiger discovered his true style during the 1950s. He integrated the futurist style of the Sixties, which was influenced by space research, into his abstract and colorful compositions.

"Just like light, color has the right to be treated as an element – fire, water, air, color, light and earth." This theory by Rupprecht Geiger is clearly expressed in this work, which exclusively lives on color and form. Through the focus on one form and one color, the artist gives these two basic elements in this work a maximum expressiveness: "The variety of abstract forms with the often scurrile bordering lines distracts from the color, whereas with archetypal forms, like rectangles and circles, color can unaffectedly emerge." (Rupprecht Geiger, transl. of quote after: Künstler. Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, edition 1, p. 2).

He repeatedly showed works at the documenta in Kassel between 1959 and 1977. He gave up working as an architect in 1962 in order to concentrate on his painting. In 1965 Geiger was appointed professor at the Akademie in Düsseldorf, a post that he held until 1976. Geiger has been a member of the ‘Akademie der Schönen Künste’ in Munich since 1982. In 1987 he was commissioned with the sculpture "Gerundetes Blau" for the cultural centre Gasteig in Munich. Geiger died in Munich in 2009. Rupprecht Geiger's abstract color compositions make him one of the most important artists of "Farbfeldmalerei" (color field painting) in Germany. [KH]