Page 33 - Studio International - February 1966

Heads were shaken, but more was still to come. This
was the year when Geiger introduced luminous
paint, of the kind used for poster-grounds or lettering.
The aesthetes squirmed. The technically-minded knew
the pictures would turn black. Oddly enough, they are as
fresh today as they were then : and they anticipate Op
colour by ten years. But unlike the Op artists Geiger
was not satisfied just by the optical. His chromatic
vibration lies between movement and sound. The result
is to dematerialise the elements. Their body is that of a
searchlight-beam. Weightless monumentality, the aerial
plane—these could easily constitute a new illusion.
With curiously direct devices, such as a white margin
on the two sides, we are drawn back to the reality of
paint and canvas.
In 1958, in his fiftieth year, Geiger came to his full
maturity. He began to transcend direct experience. The
forms do not change much. Most real creative artists
circle a lifetime; it is epigones who jump and change.
Yet like ice into water, water into steam, the state of
Geiger's forms was changing as the temperatures rose.
The four landscapes of his experience were fusing to
a landscape of the Universe.
In 1959 I visited a Geiger exhibition with a scientist
from the Federal Institute for Physics and Technology.
Above Below
E60 1948
Rotes Rund 1963 He stood before one work. 'Yes', he said, 'that's how
Oil Egg tempera
32 1/4 x 29 1/8 in. 55 1/4 x 70 7/8 in. it would be from a space-craft if one were approaching
the sun. There is the glowing curve—the protuberances
are quite visible. The field of vision is dark, since there
isn't any atmosphere. But cosmic dust rises, catching
the light, giving red and green tones on the black sky.
That's it, all right'. I did not take this conversation very
seriously. The specialist projects his view on everything.
Then came the first colour films taken on rocket flights.
They were certainly as near to Geiger as the Pro-
vencal landscape is to the painting of Cezanne.
Is this not too 'read-in' ? Or is the painter following
the fashion of the rocket space-age ? Would it not be
truer, as a critic of the latest exhibition writes, to explain
everything in Albers-terminology as 'colour-interaction'
and 'effective colour-circumstance' ? The best answer,
I think, is Geiger's own, anticipating the event. In 1948
he noted in his diary:
'Niels Bohr: contradiction— father of all things—the
divine the harmony of contradictions. Evolution of
colour. Contradiction in the distribution of colour.
Result: Form; colour is primary. The beauty of colour
becomes a cosmic truth. The way is : 1. via the destruc-
tion of Form (Picasso), 2. to abstract painting—non-
objective painting with the same colour-laws of
material, 3. to a gradually-increasing simplification of
Form, to Colour-Form'.
In its essence, that statement contains his programme
up to the present day. q