Radiant, mystical, powerful: Graubner’s iconic “Color-Space Bodies” and the dissolution of the boundaries of painting
Radiant, mystical, and powerful, these are the qualities that emanate from Gotthard Graubner’s monumental “Color-Space Body”. Its title, “Lapilli”, alludes to volcanic eruptions and conveys the internal glow of the deep violet color. Graubner’s captivating “Color Space Bodies” rank among the iconic works of the German postwar avant-garde, for Graubner was the creator of a radically new type of painting that transcends the boundaries of the classic panel painting. His works, which expand into the space like color clouds, offer a three-dimensional experience. In a magical, contemplative manner, the color expands from the stretched canvas into the surrounding space and, at the same time, through individual layers of paint applied with dynamic accents, into the depth, thereby enabling a nearly physical immersion in the color. The character of these color worlds is utterly unique. The experience of their auratic presence is particularly intense and captivating when standing before his monumental works, which are rarely offered on the international market, as is the case with our impressively glowing composition “Lapilli.” This fascinating work by Gotthard Graubner seems to unite the gestural surface dynamics of Jackson Pollock with the mystical color effects of Mark Rothko.


Graubner/Rothko: documenta II (1959) and Graubner’s painterly foray into the third dimension
One of the central artistic influences on the young Graubner was the American artist Mark Rothko and his large-scale color fields, which evoke a sense of spirituality and contemplation. Rothko participated in the 1959 documenta II in Kassel—an exhibition that was crucial to establishing Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting in Europe—alongside his American contemporaries Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Willem de Kooning. At the time, Graubner was 29 and still a student at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. The legendary documenta II, which turned the contemporary concept of art upside down and was much discussed in the press at the time, must therefore have been a profound artistic awakening for the young Graubner as well, inspiring him to radically set himself and his art apart from all previous traditions. "When the West German curators of the second documenta unpacked the crates delivered from New York shortly before the opening, the sight of the works turned their concept inside out. The visual impact of the 144 American artworks was overwhelming. Next to the expansive, space-filling, expressive canvases by Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, William de Kooning, Sam Francis, and Helen Frankenthaler, the abstract works by European artists such as Wols, Soulages, Dubuffet, Nay, Hartung, or Winter looked quiet and—to put it bluntly—old" (quoted from: Marie Luise Knott, Abstrakter Expressionismus. Die documenta II und das Ende des Kalten Kunstkriegs, in: Ästhetik + Politik. Neuaufteilungen des Sinnlichen in der Kunst, ed. by M. Ott and H. Strauß, Schriftenreihe der HFBK Hamburg, Hamburg 2009).


1959, the year in which Graubner graduated from the academy, was thus a year of an artistic culture shock that was to shake up the relatively staid German art world quite thoroughly. And for Graubner, too, something entirely new was about to begin, for he created his first “Cushion Paintings” as early as the early 1960s—a precursor to his later “Color Space Bodies”—with which Graubner was ultimately represented at documenta 4 in 1968, and which he would also exhibit at documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977.


Auratic Presence: From “Cushion Paintings” to the monumental “Color Space Bodies”
While Graubner initially stretched his early cushion paintings with fine nylon fabric, for his later, larger-format “Color Space Bodies”—as in our “Lapilli,” which fills the space with a transcendent inner radiance—he increasingly used sturdy canvases, which he backed with upholstery wadding. The paint was usually applied with broom-like brushes to the canvas lying on the floor or leaning against the wall. To enhance the complexity of the individual color values into a “Color Space Body” with an oscillating effect and a unique auratic presence, numerous drying processes are required. In addition, a special compositional sensitivity characterizes Graubner’s painterly work decisively. Beginning in the 1980s, Graubner's monumental “Color Space Bodies” achieved the maximum dissolution of the boundaries of the color's effect. Owing to the innovative aesthetics of his three-dimensional painting, Graubner’s “Color Space Bodies” are regarded not only as the central group of works in the artist’s oeuvre, but also as particularly bold and iconic creations of the European postwar avant-garde. [JS]