124
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
- Estimate
- £60,000 - 80,000♠
£62,500
Lot Details
oil and enamel on canvas
87 x 117.2 cm (34 1/4 x 46 1/8 in.)
Specialist
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
Rising to prominence in the late 1980s with his monochromatic works, Rudolf Stingel has developed a unique style of painting which attempts to subvert the traditional structure of artistic creation. Examining the crucial issues regarding painting nowadays – figuration, abstraction, meaning and context – he freed painting from the limiting idea of simple representation, and Untitled, 1986 is an important early evidence of this.
Untitled is a beautiful work from 1986; the distinct, energetic brushstrokes and fascinating shades of dark and light green remind the viewer of Rudolf Stingel’s childhood spent in between Austria and the Tyrol. The innovation Stingel brought to his artistic production concerns his effort to overcome the bridge between figuration and abstraction: at once performances and gestures, Stingel’s work attempts to reconcile the present moment with eternal time, so as to focus on the pattern of history, which blends in figurative images and abstract visions of the future.
Untitled is a beautiful work from 1986; the distinct, energetic brushstrokes and fascinating shades of dark and light green remind the viewer of Rudolf Stingel’s childhood spent in between Austria and the Tyrol. The innovation Stingel brought to his artistic production concerns his effort to overcome the bridge between figuration and abstraction: at once performances and gestures, Stingel’s work attempts to reconcile the present moment with eternal time, so as to focus on the pattern of history, which blends in figurative images and abstract visions of the future.
Provenance
Rudolf Stingel
Italian | 1956Rudolf Stingel came to prominence in the late 1980s for his insistence on the conceptual act of painting in a context in which it had been famously declared dead. Despite the prevailing minimalist and conceptual narrative of the time, the Italian-born artist sought to confront the fundamental aspirations and failures of Modernist painting through the very medium of painting itself. While his works do not always conform to the traditional definitions of painting, their attention to surface, space, color and image provide new and expanded ways of thinking about the process and "idea" of painting. Central to his multifarious and prolific oeuvre is an examination of the passage of time and the probing of the fundamental questions of authenticity, meaning, hierarchy, authorship and context by dislocating painting both internally and in time and space. Stingel is best known for his wall-to-wall installations, constructed of fabric or malleable Celotex sheets, as well as his seemingly more traditional oil-on-canvas paintings.
Browse Artist