Page 43 - Studio International - October 1966

Germany : the new generation

Above
Roswitha Lüder
Falling white 1963
Oil
47 1/4 x 31 1/2 in.

Above centre
Victor Bonato
Group of figures 1966
Collage painting
39 3/8 x 65 in.
Above right
Manfred Mausz
Portrait of Lenelore Lenz
Oil and styropour
53 1/8 x 70 3/4 in.
Bruno Gronen
Love 1966
Tryptich
Oil
Each panel 70 3/4 x 53 1/8 in.
form, and texture are preserved and visible. The long with race riots, or a Papal Concilium. The two painters
forms brood on their pale grounds, but there is no senti- are close friends and are to an extent complementary.
mentality. Neo-Figuration seems to suit women and Bonato has the liveliness of his Italian inheritance. He is a
water colourists. Dagmar Zepter (Cologne), 27, and the brilliant draughtsman with an instinctive form-sense and
slightly older Anke Holfeld are examples, though oppo- an equally gifted handworker, making objects of glass,
sites in their methods. The first works in a free manner, metal, mirror, plastics, or old machine-parts. But he is too
and dream-objects or landscapes of floating, lyrical stimulated, too productive, and cannot settle for a
intensity emerge from her abstract compositions. The personal statement and a personal style. Mausz, on the
second works from landscape-derived motifs whenever contrary, is a classic case of German Schwerfälligkeit:
possible and transposes them into rhythmic patterns. working for months on each painting, plugging his
themes with ferocious determination.
Finally, there are the figurative painters proper. Five The two women painters with whom I end are com-
of the six personally known to me come from Cologne. mentators too. With Sarah Schumann of Berlin I dealt in
Of these, Hausjürgen Grümmer at 31 and Bruno Gronen, the previous article. She is now 31. In a sense she too was
two years younger, are essentially formalists. Both use a Pop-painter 'before the event' in Germany. She uses
figures and objects, like Braque and Gris, as specific collages of pin-ups, though these are usually fashion-
examples of the rules of Form. Both have the necessary illustrations. Then she adds, as it were, a second mask:
architectural faculty. Grümmer, indeed, has designed the elongations and aesthetic colours of art nouveau. Her
several architectural projects, the latest being 'water pictures are sexy, ironic, poetic, personal, and always
terraces' for the new campus of the University. Gronen realized as visual form. Christine Meschede (Cologne) is
is more of a pure painter, but with the marks of a mural- two years older. She has the genuine Pop-spirit: laugh-
ist. He accepts influences consciously—Picasso, Braque, ingly disengaged, fascinated by the folklore of a capitalist
Matisse, Max Ernst—but is never the ecclectic or epigone. society. Her collage-watercolours have a mise-en-page
His vitality is gargantuan, both in digesting and pro- which seems infallible. In painting her colour is luminous
ducing. Victor Bonato and Manfred Mausz, on the other and rather optical, running to combinations of orange,
hand, are essentially engage. The figure (it is usually a vermillion and lemon yellow. It represents the standpoint
figure) is not primarily form but commentary. Even of an age-group for which war and Nazis are not even a
their least decipherable paintings turn out to be dealing memory and which thinks of living as pleasurable.
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