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Günther Förg, 'Untitled', Lot 12
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, 13 February
Provenance
Luhring Augustine Hetzler Gallery, Santa Monica
Galerie Michael Janssen, Cologne
Private Collection, Hamburg
Phillips de Pury & Company, London, 14 October 2006, lot 68
Private Collection, Florida
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Dallas Museum of Art, Encounters 2: Günther Förg and Skeet McAuley, 9 August - 27 September 1992
Literature
We thank Mr. Michael Neff from the Estate of Günther Förg for the information he has kindly provided on this work.
Catalogue Essay
Towering high above the viewer’s eye, Untitled, 1990, is a particularly vibrant example of Günther Förg’s exhaustive series of Lead Paintings, developed in the late 1980s and completed in the early 1990s. In these works, Förg juxtaposed acrylic and lead on flat wooden supports, revealing the tonal and textural variations deriving from the metallic material’s progressive oxidisation. Focusing on the formal abilities enabled by the metal, Förg circumvented the tide of figurative painting that was pervading his native Germany in the 1980s; instead, he remained attached to abstraction, and the organic processes with which the genre could be achieved. In the present composition, Förg celebrates the charismatic presence of two disparate yet commanding hues: a natural, meandering silvery colour – organically washed out in places – and a deep, cherry red pigment. Untitled was notably highlighted in the exhibition Encounters 2: Günther Förg and Skeet McAuley which took place at the Dallas Museum of Art in 1992, marking the first museum exhibition of Förg in the United States, as well as the inaugural presentation of his Lead Paintings to the country's wider public.

While Förg’s initial painterly experiments were occupied with stringent black monochrome works, the Lead Paintings followed a stationary period in the artist’s creativity, following his abandonment of painting in the early 1980s. It wasn’t until commencing his Lead Paintings at the end of the decade that Förg began utilising the medium again, covering wooden frames with sheets of lead, and subsequently painting directly onto the sheets, without treatment or preliminary ground. Emitting a distinctive solidity, the artist’s choice of materials never failed to highlight the strength of his chosen colour – herein, a sensual red. Laying bare any residing marks on the lead ground, he moreover built upon the material’s potentiality, and exploited the possibilities enabled by the brushstroke in conjunction with the chosen chrome.

In this sense, it is the materiality of the present work that most powerfully distinguishes it from other two-dimensional abstractions. ‘I like very much the qualities of lead – the surface, the heaviness’, the artist claimed. ‘Some of the paintings were completely painted, and you only experience the lead at the edges; this gives the painting a very heavy feeling - it gives the colour a different density and weight. In other works the materials would be explicitly visible as grounds. I like to react on things, with the normal canvas you often have to kill the ground, give it something to react against. With the metals you already have something - its scratches, scrapes’ (Günther Förg, quoted in David Ryan, Talking Painting, Karlsruhe, 1997, online). A work replete with contrasts and dualities, both chromatic and textural, Untitled prodigiously captures Förg’s preoccupation with the ephemeral and the natural.

Expanding on the radically understated appearance of his work, Förg has advocated that abstraction is a means of expression in itself, whereby the materiality of the surface is of superior importance. ‘Working in a language (abstraction) that in the twentieth century has been described as spiritual, religious, symbolic, profoundly universal, and mythic, there seems nothing of that in Förg’s reality… a sense of nothing but the thing itself’, Paul Schimmel wrote (Paul Schimmel, Günther Förg: Painting/Sculpture/Installation, exh. cat., Newport Harbor Art Museum, California, 1989, p. 15). The artist, in this sense, rejected the metaphysical significance imparted by Barnett Newman in his infamous Zip paintings; instead, he veered towards the quiet contemplation enabled by Donald Judd’s non-spiritual sculptures. ‘Lacking both a clean, hard edge, as in Palermo’s paintings, and the unbridled gesture of the expressionists, Förg’s composition and technique lie somewhere in between’, continues Paul Schimmel. ‘The edges are neat but not precise, hand-made and rapidly laid down, with spontaneity having priority over structure…chance and spontaneity are emphasized further in the Lead Paintings in which the natural oxidation of the lead neutralizes the personal touch’ (Paul Schimmel, ‘Introduction’, Günther Förg: Paintings/Sculpture/Installation, exh. cat., Newport Harbor Art Museum, California, 1989, p. 14).

Celebrating the substance of lead and revealing the exquisite sensual properties of a quasi-scarlet red, Untitled embodies the artist’s fundamental painterly formula in a way that incorporates composition, space, colour and materiality. As a result, ‘colours emerge, the paintings become more open, and even the material’s arbitrary elements in the patina become part of the picture’ (Günther Förg, quoted in Günther Förg: Paintings on Lead, exh. cat., Thomas Dane Gallery, London, 2006, p. 7).

12

Günther Förg

Untitled

acrylic on lead on wood
280.4 x 160.3 cm (110 3/8 x 63 1/8 in.)
Executed in 1990, this work is recorded in the archive of Günther Förg as No. WVF.90.B.0532.

Estimate
£400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠

Sold for £411,000

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20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London Auction 13 February 2020

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The Lemon Bathing Suit
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Julie Curtiss
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3
Tschabalala Self
Princess
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Eddie Martinez
Neanderthal Jeans
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5
Katharina Grosse
Untitled
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6
Yayoi Kusama
INFINITY-NETS (KSUZL)
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7
El Anatsui
Affirmation
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8
Jia Aili
The Young
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡
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9
Ed Ruscha
God Knows Where
Estimate £2,500,000 - 3,500,000 ‡
Sold for £3,375,000
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10
Keith Haring
Untitled
Estimate £3,000,000 - 4,000,000
Sold for £3,206,000
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11
A.R. Penck
AUFSTAND DER SPIELER
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000 ♠
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12
Günther Förg
Untitled
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £411,000
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13
This lot is no longer available.
14
Anish Kapoor
Blade
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡♠
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15
Michael Craig-Martin
Full
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ♠
Sold for £162,500
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16
Damien Hirst
Antipyrylazo III
Estimate £900,000 - 1,200,000 ♠
Sold for £1,275,000
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17
Damien Hirst
Bodies
Estimate £1,200,000 - 1,800,000 ♠
Sold for £1,368,600
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18
Gilbert & George
CITY FAIRIES
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ♠
Sold for £156,250
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19
Damien Hirst
Summer Breeze
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
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20
Damien Hirst
Beautiful tropical, jungle painting (with pink snot)
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21
Gary Hume
Magnolia Door One
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22
Peter Doig
Camp Forestia
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23
Cecily Brown
Girl Eating Turtle Dove
Estimate £550,000 - 750,000 ‡♠
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24
Sean Scully
Robe Green Gold
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Sold for £987,000
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25
This lot is no longer available.
26
Alex Katz
Gray Bow
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000
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27
Tom Wesselmann
Reverse Drawing: Bedroom Blonde with Irises
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28
Michaël Borremans
Untitled
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
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29
Adrian Ghenie
Pie Fight Study 4
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ♠
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30
Marlene Dumas
Chained to the Bed for 15 Years
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31
Takashi Murakami
Cosmic Power
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32
KAWS
FAR AWAY FRIENDS
Estimate £800,000 - 1,200,000
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33
Takashi Murakami
Dragon Heads - Gold
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34
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35
Anish Kapoor
Sky Mirror
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36
Raoul De Keyser
Hellepoort
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ♠
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37
Marcel Broodthaers
Moules
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 ♠
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38
Carol Rama
Pornografia due
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39
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40
Roman Opałka
OPAŁKA 1965/1 – ∞ DETAIL 4514079 – 4536373
Estimate £250,000 - 300,000 ♠
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41
KAWS
ON TIME
Estimate £300,000 - 400,000
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20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London Auction 13 February 2020

Create your first list.

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

12

Günther Förg

Untitled

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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