Page 42 - Studio International - October 1966
P. 42

Above left
       Hausjürgen Grammer
       Drawing 1963
       55 1/8 x 67 in.
       Above centre
       Gerd Hanebeck
       Painting 1965
       Mixed Media
       47 1/4 x 39 3/8 in.
       Above right
       Anke Holfeld
       Watercolour 1962

       Right
       Christine Meschede
       Collage 1966
       19 5/8 x 25 1/2 in.
       Far Right
       Dagmar Zepter
       Gouache 1966
       33 7/8 x 23 5/8 in.
                               formed into a kind of esoteric ornament : again a 'coat-  lines and points, rhythmic, staccato, almost dry. Here
                               of-arms' for the invisible. In the new generation the most  ornament evolves out of dynamics. Bernd Völkle was
                               consistent follower of this line is Kriemhild Flake of  another infant prodigy, with one-man shows at 20. The
                               Hamburg. Her work shows clear traces of the influence  over-confidence which resulted often makes his work
                               of southern Spanish medieval ornament. She has gone to  loose. But at their best his collage-paintings have
                               Spain (as the Cubists went to the Congo and the Ivory  authority. The Action Painting rhythms with which he
                               Coast) for a visual tradition extinct in Western Europe.  started are constructed in a way one could call hier-
                               The Cubists looked for formal, plastic formulae; she  archical.
                               looked for graphic signs and symbols. It is the same
                               search for roots, not in the rational traditions long grown  In Germany, as everywhere, there is a neo-figurative
                               meaningless, but at the base of human culture. Kim  tendency. In its first form this evolved figuration from
                               Flake's modern icons draw on myths and legends we have  the painting process. Roswitha Lüder of Hagen has
                               almost lost. They project this with concentration and  worked on this since she came out of art school. At 31,
                               great plastic density. The whole ornamental tendency  she is one of its leading exponents—and not just in the
                               seems to me one attempt to break way from insularity in  younger group. Her imagery has kept its early ambiguity,
                               time, the consequences of which C. G. Jung described in  but shifted from the anthropomorphic (a still-life trans-
                               his autobiography.                                 forming into a figure-group and back again) to a basis
                                Manfred Wotke of Bochum, an exact contemporary of  which is on the whole a landscape one. Her colour-sense,
                               Kriemhild Flake, is a graphic artist. He is more linear,  especially within the lower register, is certainly one of the
                               geometric, optical, with elements which lie between  best in German art just now. Her brush-work has
                               turning machines and Aztec suns. But the two are work-  slashing attack, clean execution and a power reminiscent
                               ing in parallel. R. A. Scholl (Cologne) and Bernd  of Orozco. Oversensitive reporters often wince at its
                               Völkle (Müllheim in Baden) come to ornament from the  `brutality'.
                               informel.  Scholl works in many media: glass windows,   Gerd Hanebeck (Remscheid) is four years younger and
                               metal reliefs, painting, drawing, and etching. This may  not yet fully developed. His basis is clearly the figure; but
                               have held him back, for now at 35 he has just found him-  with the same ambiguity. He, too, has a sense for dark
                               self. He has got rid of the soft charm which tends to hang  tones and can paint, as it were, against the light. The
                               on painting in Cologne and developed a graphic style of   result is a kind of silhouette, but all the shifts of tone,
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