Page 52 - Studio International - March 1965

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his paintings are created in the 'creative moment
itself after long and pregnant pauses before fruition.
They are painted at great speed, in most cases in a few
minutes or half an hour; the actual or putative times are
given in the titles themselves, which-since 1953-are
little more than times. '1 0.x.58, 20.21 to 20.27 hrs , rue
..,. Boromee, Paris--that is the only way of describing the
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fleeting moment-as a work sheet or compiler's
reference·, writes Sonderborg in the catalogue for his
exhibition at the Galerie Karl Fl inker in Paris ( November/
-- .... 'act of painting' as follows: 'Whilst painting, a maxi­
December 1960). Three years earlier he described the
.
mum point of sensitivity and concentration is reached,
L which nevertheless does not prevent me from simul­
• taneously enjoying contemplative calm and awareness .
Deep peace and speed are the poles between which my
-' life is held in tension: sharp action and passive readiness
for that-which-is-yet-to-be-discovered . . . ·
Simultaneously the two following aspects are notice­
able: tempo as formal expression and as registered
.. content of the painting itself. Act and expression are
..II identical for Sonderborg; the ·act' with the painterly­
graphic media results in expressive signs that do not
denote any message or have any particular meaning,
but which represent situations. 'Chance· often plays a
not unimportant role during the process of creation, for
it is with this irrefragable phenomenon that the painter
communes; it is by 'chance· that he is moved and it is
from 'chance· that he creates. Ultimately it is this element
that is 'made to exist' in Paul Klee's sense, i.e. that­
which-is-chance-that-which-is-occurrence-without­
premeditation finally becomes an integral component
of the objective picture. Sonderborg's painting is
essentially concentrated dynamism; his graphic signs
are parables of our technological era, although no
photographic realism is allowed us. Associative images
of space travel, rockets and nuclear explosions are
dissolved to appear thus on the processing screen with
suggestions of blues melodies, ships' hooters, the
't' • . -- changing traffic of a city that embraces our world.
elephantine regularity of machinery or the ever­
Sonderborg paints, as Carl Laszlo once put it, so aptly
• • .,__ and so lyrically:
'The gay laughter of metallic shavings,
without painting shavings;
The acrobatics of the aeroplane,
without painting an aeroplane;
The stately progress of the liner.
without painting a liner.
I I," A thousandfold movements-the glitter, hate and
fury of explosions
dominantly graphic style to his visits to Paris. If his Are in these pictures, in their every facet.
early pictures of 1952/53 are compared with those Clarity, precision and boundless power to astonish
painted since 1955, this observation is clearly justified. rule in this cosmic and metallic world
Although at first sight it may not appear to be so, Where there is not subjective spirit, for it is gone.
Sonderborg-the 'specialist'-has obviously undergone Like a phantom that flees before the sunlight.'
a process of development, which is mainly to be seen in (Catalogue of the Sonderborg Exhibition in the van de
, his works produced during the last few years. But what Loo Gallery, Essen 1959.)

Paris. Villa Santos Dumont, is the precise nature of Sonderborg's painting? What are Within the self-appointed narrow limits three different
16.77.7967, 22.17-23.25h the stages in his evolution as a painter? stylistic phases can be distinguished in Sonderborg's
Egg Tempera
110 x 70 cm. In an article on Sonderborg (written in 1958), Werner painting. The first (1952/53) comprises the above­
Collection Gard Hatje, Stuttgart Schmalenbach accurately defines three different aspects mentioned personal project for a new conception of
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28.Vl/.64 of his painterly tempo, which play a major part in his act pictorial form; the second is the perfection of this
19h 12-19h 46 of creation : · Firstly there is the tempo of the process of painting of explosions and sharp trajectories, which
Egg Tempera. 1 964
110 x 70 cm. painting itself. Then there is the "tempo" of artistic attains to a series of major works in 1955/56; the third
Tokyo Gal!ery, Tokyo
3 expression and formal character, and finally the content period began in 1957 /58 and is characterized by the
Ink drawing, 1964 of the picture presented to us.' The painter himself has rhythmical delineation on the surface of the picture of
76 X 57
Galerie Karl Flinker. Paris remarked on the first of these aspects, and stated that dense, interwoven structures and cross-hatchings. In
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