André Butzer - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Tuesday, October 12, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

  • Catalogue Essay

    Executed on a monumental scale, André Butzer’s paintings depict a colourful, imaginary world inhabited by a disquieting cast of grotesque cartoon characters. Influenced by his upbringing in 1980s West Germany in which American troops were stationed, Butzer’s canvases serve as a witty satire of the American Dream. His signature figures with their maniacal smiles, hollowed-out death-mask eyes and puffy Mickey Mouse hands allude to a dark,
    twisted side of Disneyland. Butzer’s protagonists have a similar psychological heaviness as well as a physical likeness to the lone, depressed figure in Edward Munch’s Scream. Stylistically, Butzer’s approach is to fill the canvas to the edge with a dizzying array of coded imagery executed in a child-like manner. The gestural application of paint straight from the tube and the raw, primitive rendering of organic forms are reminiscent of the meandering line of Joan Miró and of Jean Dubuffet’s Art Brut. An undeniable force possesses Butzer’s paintings, a powerful expression of the Romantic ideal of the artist, of truth, of beauty and ugliness.

Berlin Zeitgeist! A selection from the Adam Lindemann collection of contemporary German art

28

N-Fleisch

2005
Oil on canvas.
250.19 x 200 cm (98 1/2 x 78 3/4 in).
Signed 'A. Butzer' lower right; signed, titled, inscribed and dated 'N-Fleisch Arthur Seyß A. Butzer 05' on the reverse.

Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 ‡♠

Sold for £25,000

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

13 October 2010
London