Albert Oehlen - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 13, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin; The Pierre Huber Collection, Geneva

  • Exhibited


    Essen, Museum Folkwang, Werner Büttner, Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen, February 4 – March 11, 1984; Geneva, Art & Public, Albert Oehlen, February 2 – March 3, 2000; Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, June 18-September 5, 2004; Salamanca, Domus Artium 2002, December 9, 2004 – January 30, 2005; and Kunsthalle Nurnberg, April 28 – June 26, 2005 ; Albert Oehlen: Peintures/Maleriei, 1980-2004: Self Portrait at 50 million times the speed of light, June 2004 – June 2005; Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Private View 1980 – 2000: Collection Pierre Huber, June 14 – September 11, 2005

  • Literature


    W. Buttner, M. Kippenberger, and A. Oehlen, Werner Büttner, Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen, Essen, 1984, p. 80 (illustrated); Taschen, ed., Albert Oehlen, Cologne, 1995, p. 18 (illustrated); M. Prinzhorn and S. Schmidt-Wulfen, Albert Oehlen: Gemälde Paintings, 1980 – 1982, Berlin, 2002, p. 31 (illustrated); R. Biel, Albert Oehlen: Peintures/Maleriei, 1980 – 2004, Zurich, 2004, p. 51 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay


    In the 1980s, German artist Albert Oehlen executed work that was thematically in sync with the Neo-Expressionist painting movement, then active in Europe and the United States. His work was characterized by heroic poses highlighting an amplified self-superiority complex. Oehlen’s early figurative paintings, exemplified by the present lot, Grazie, emphasize a theme of grandeur associated with religions or history, while simultaneously undercutting the idea of grandeur with stylistic and tonal choices more akin to banal human existence. Gracing the line between spiritual bliss and earthly despair, the indistinct figural expression and fragmentation depicted in the current lot provokes a Modernist ideal of artistic transcendence.

41

Grazie

1982
Oil and lacquer on canvas.
67 x 59 ¼ in. (170.2 x 150.5 cm).
Signed and dated “A. Oehlen 82” on the reverse.

Estimate
$150,000 - 200,000 

Sold for $176,500

Contemporary Art Part I

13 Nov 2008, 7pm
New York