Page 53 - Studio International - July August 1968

point of departure is the overcoming of Abstract Expressionism. frame rectangle, so that the surface upsurge gains in significance.
Bruning was once one of Germany's leading action painters: now he The tenderness of Graubner's use of colour wins its identity through
has brought the informal gesture to repose—in cartography. For him, light: this was why the artist became attached for a brief period to
maps are 'the last fully functioning language of painting to corres- the Zero group, represented in Germany by Mack, Piene and
pond to our consciousness, the last painterly orientation that will Uecker. Of these three only Gunther Uecker (born 1930) is to be seen
continue to exist in the future, and which I can use to record at Documenta IV. In the field of 'environment' he shows his Licht-
something'. Geiger and Graubner have drawn exactly opposite con- plantage, dated 1966, a cube of metal columns, measuring nine metres
clusions in the same situation : not some formal symbolism or other, across. Each of the thirty-six tubes is slit open at intervals, so that
but colour alone serves for them as the 'final painterly orientation' — light can emerge: the light emission is controlled in phases by a timer.
the only orientation which seems possible after action painting. It A veritable rain of light patters on the sensory perception, and the
must be said that informal art was as incidental to Rupprecht Geiger's materiality and objective quality of the framework dissolve into lucid
monochrome colour tables as for Newman or Rothko. Just as with illusions of space. There is a close relationship to Kinetic art, repre-
these artists, so did Geiger free himself at the beginning of the sented in Kassel by Gerhard von Graevenitz (born 1934). Graevenitz
fifties from the surrealistic tradition, and achieved without any does not concern himself however with the problem of spatiality : the
vehemence the calm formulations which are still characteristic of his creeping micro-rotation of his pictorial elements move the observer
work today. Geiger also shares with the great initiators of colour- into an open-time continuum. Similar aims, though without mechani-
painting a delayed influence, for it was only in the early sixties that cal aids, are pursued by Gunter Fruhtrunk (born 1923) and the
artists such as Gotthard Graubner adopted his idea of developing the Brazilian Almir Mavignier (born 1925), who now lives in Hamburg.
picture purely from colour. Graubner's work reveals a radical logic Mavignier succeeds in disturbing the visual position of the observer
in subjecting both the frame and the surface to the 'body of colour'. by means of intensively vibrating spot grids whereas Fruhtrunk,
After a period in which he painted 'colour pillows', a new phase has while allowing himself clear formations, takes strongly contrasting
followed (within the last year) characterized by a withdrawal to the colours in order to mobilize the picture over its own limits.

Above, Konrad Klapheck The Voice of conscience 1965, oil on canvas
29+ x 33+ in.
Above right, Peter Brüning Road-mill 1968, coloured sheet-iron
102 x 37 x 45+ in.