REFERENCES

GALERIE THOMAS GALERIE THOMAS MODERN

2

REFERENCES

The exhibition 'References' at Galerie Thomas and Galerie Thomas Modern focuses on works of art which refer to works by other artists and the art of earlier eras, frequently to so-called 'Old Masters'. Since antiquity, artists have been influenced by the oeuvre of other artists or were inspired by their artistic heritage. This was not only the case with the masters of the Renaissance and Baroque; modern and contemporary artists often explicitly refer to their sources.

However, especially in the art after 1945, numerous artists have intensively dealt with icons and masterworks of art history to establish their own artistic position and newly define the function of art and the pictorial language of art. The artists of Pop Art are among the eminent examples, for they literally re-used classic and avant-garde forms and symbols. Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselmann integrated classic masterworks into their own compositions, and George Segal re-formulated the icons of art history in his own pictorial language.

Pablo Picasso, who directly dealt with the paintings of Velazquez, Rembrandt or Cranach, is the most famous example. Max Beckmann and Paul Klee seized motifs and forms of the classic avant-garde for their own works, such as those of Malevich or in turn Picasso. Franz Marc, with his reception of Delacroix's paintings, can be seen as an example for the explicit reference to classic painting of the 19th century, while Marcel Duchamp as the counterpart de-constructed the definition of image and art, and was thus decisive for the development of modern art.

Many further artists could be named ranging from Sigmar Polke and Francis Bacon to Markus Lüpertz and Rebecca Horn. Galerie Thomas presents exemplary works by artists of classic modernism and contemporary art who demonstrate the broad spectrum of reference to other works. From Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso to Fernando Botero and Arnulf Rainer, from Jim Dine and George Segal to Imi Knoebel and Rosemarie Trockel, positions of figurative and abstract painting are presented alongside conceptual and constructive approaches.

3

DIEGO RODRÍGUEZ DE SILVA Y VELÁZQUEZ Las Meniñas 1656, Museo del Prado, Madrid

4

1599 - 1660

FERNANDO BOTERO

Mari Barbola – After Velásquez (Green) oil on canvas, 1984 168 x 143 cm / 66 1/8 x 56 1/4 in. signed and dated lower right

One of the ‘Meninas’, the court ladies, which Velasquez grouped around the infanta Margarita in his painting, is Mari Barbola, who was originally from Germany and came to Spain from the court in Vienna. She was a midget and moreover, had a hydrocephalus. The integration of very short people as exhibits, monsters and grotesque exotic objets was popular at European courts in the baroque era. Mari Barbola was a celebrity and was mentioned in contemporary reports for her ‘uglyness’. Botero's voluminous representation of the already grotesque thus has an ambiguous, caustic irony, which also emerges in a detail: the hands, depicted by Botero conspicuously small, are also mentioned in the literature on Velasquez and the Meninas.

From the beginning of his career Fernando Botero delved into occidental art history and the old masters. At the same time he developed his signature style, the main feature being the expansion of the volume of figures and objects and the use of bright colours. As early as the 1950s, at the age of 20, he copied masterpieces in the Prado in Madrid. He subsequently created paraphrases of well known paintings by famous artists. A special interest repeatedly led him to Velasquez: he even painted a portrait of himself as Diego Velasquez. Las Meninas, one of the most significant works in art history and itself a reflexion on painting by the Spanish master, was taken up by Botero again and again over several decades.

Botero has expanded his declared goal, the deformation of reality, to include the great precursors in art and thus has simultaneously documented reverence, conquest and triumph. RM 5

GERRIT RIETVELD

MARCEL DUCHAMP

1888 - 1964

Red Blue Chair

Fontaine

1918

1917

6

1887 - 1968

MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN

Art & Design: 1917 digital inkjet print on paper, 2013 100 x 141 cm image / 111,5 x 153,5 cm paper 39 3/8 x 55 1/2 in. image / 43 7/8 x 53 3/8 in. paper signed, dated and numbered 2/25 lower right edition of 25 + 5 E.A.

The issue of the nature of art, the authorship and the role of the viewer has concerned Michael Craig-Martin since the beginning of his artistic work. Initially he worked conceptually, before he found an emblematic artistic language in the 1970s. The artist turned to everyday objects of our environment, thought up by Man and produced by machines. He pointed out the beauty and validity of these objects, which are hardly noticed because of their ubiquitousness, as an expression of a universal language of the modern world. Since 2001 Craig-Martin has repeatedly been using iconic artworks of the 20th century, combined with other objects. He concentrates on artworks which have only turned into art by receiving a name and their context.

In the series Art & Design Craig-Martin places iconic artworks of the 20th century next to chairs, which have become design icons and were created in the same year. Here it is the Red Blue Chair by Gerrit Rietveld and the urinal by Marcel Duchamp titled Fontaine. Craig-Martin is virtually compiling an alphabet of significant art and design objects. By his focussed way of representation, he sets them on a pedestal and with the title conveys them back into the intended context, re-establishing the hierarchy. However, in their emblematic alienation, they become ‘symbolic forms’ and equal in their ambiguousness. SD 7

AUGUSTE MOREAU Le secret

8

1834-1917

WIM DELVOYE

Le secret (Clockwise) polished bronze, 2011 64 x 26 x 24 cm, 25 1/4 x 10 1/4 x 9 3/4 in. signed on the plinth’s inside, titled on the plinth unique work

For the sculpture Le secret Delvoye has been inspired by the eponymous sculpture of Auguste Moreau (1834-1917). However, that is not really a baroque sculpture, but rather a tacky homey adaption of the vocabulary of baroque imagery, typical of the late 19th century. This ‘copy’ is still mass produced today as a copy "after Moreau".

The metamorphosis of objects from the world of consumerism, art or daily life, which are inscribed in the collective memory of the Western world, is a feature of Wim Delvoye's works. However, his levelling of ‘high’ and ‘low’ in terms of a rearrangement of an established vocabulary of forms from the classic canon of art history, does not lead to a negation of art, but to an affirmation of the object and the work of art, which in itself has no use, except that of just being art.

Delvoye actually re-transfers the sculpture into a classic motif, however, it presents itself in a completely un-classic way: The children whispering a secret into each other's ear have become the lovers Amor and Psyche, the heads, turned towards each other, the centre of the rotation, have become a suggested kiss. Delvoye turns the tawdry version of a mainstream image of baroque again into a work of art, opening up possibilities of reflexion on the art of baroque as well as its epigones. SD

Delvoye wittily undermines the clichés of iconography and forces the viewer to change his accustomed way of seeing. In the series Twisted, Delvoye has made 3D-scans of baroque sculptures and twisted them digitally, usually around the apex – either clockwise or counter clockwise. 9

Venus of Milo late 2nd century B.C. Louvre, Paris

10

JIM DINE

The small commercial plaster reproduction of the Venus of Milo from the Louvre first appears in Dine's oeuvre in one of his still lifes of 1978 as one object among many others. It was only several years later that he returned to the motif and turned it into an iconic feature of his art. Since 1983 he has created prints, drawings, paintings and sculptures of the Venus in manifold variations. Few works of art are symbolically and arthistorically as charged as the Venus of Milo, a symbol of beauty, femininity and fertility and the example par excellence of Hellenistic sculpture. However, Dine has reworked, internalized, destroyed and reassembled this motif, until it was naturally integrated in his canon of motifs. He removed the head and concentrated on the body. Thus he released the Venus of Milo from its historical burden. In this way Dine managed to appropriate this sculpture for himself, but simultaneously to preserve it as a universally understood symbol.

Painted Solo Venus bronze, painted red, 2006 88,9 x 40,6 x 40,6 cm / 35 x 16 x 16 in. with signature, numbered 3/8 and with foundry mark on the plinth edition of 8

The first Venus sculptures, created in 1983, were of bronze, a medium allowing a large spectrum of treatment: in the shaping of the clay, the finishing of the bronze cast, the painting and patination, which facilitate the lively structure of the surface, a feature of Dine's works. Later he also created sculptures of wood and marble, groups and assemblages, small delicate miniatures or monumental works for public places. The spectrum of variations, including the two-dimensional representations, seems inexhaustible for Dine, and each of them is individual, different and novel. SD 11

LEONARDO DA VINCI

1690 - 1730

La Gioconda (Mona Lisa) c. 1503 - 05 Louvre, Paris

12

MARCEL DUCHAMP

When Marcel Duchamp drew a moustache on a reproduction on the at that time already most famous painting in the world, an icon of beauty and art, it was a disrespectful iconoclasm, a downright blasphemy. The obscene caption, only somewhat encrypted, at least for French native speakers, did its part in making this iconoclasm evident, not only as an attack on art, but on the bourgeois view of the world. Leonardo's Mona Lisa, as a singular example of occidental painting, was considered an unsolvable enigma, not just in regard to the person portrayed, but especially because of her unfathomable smile. With his more than cheeky drawing and caption, Duchamp supplied a very worldly explanation for the Renaissance lady's smile. Thus, not only Leonardo's masterpiece was disenchanted (or, in the eyes of the contemporary public, defiled), but the claim to effective power by the whole of ‘high’ art.

L.H.O.O.Q. Rasée playing card mounted on printed paper, 1965 21,6 x 14 cm / 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. signed lower right and titled 'rasée L.H.O.O.Q.' below the image edition of about 100

When Duchamp returned to the theme in the 1960s, he was no longer only referring to the Mona Lisa, but at the same time citing himself. He not only repeated the earlier L.H.O.O.Q., but also his own invention, the readymade, by using a simple playing card, a mass product. Furthermore, he ironized his own annexation of the Mona Lisa by not drawing a moustache on the image this time, but adding ‘Rasée’ (shaved) to the caption. This perfected the iconoclasm, for now the reference was no longer to a work by Leonardo, but to Duchamp's own work, appearing without the moustache. Thus Duchamp takes the knowledge of his work for granted to an extent as great as that of the Mona Lisa, and with a minimum of intervention he manages to take the whole system of correlations of art history ad absurdum – not without his very own kind of wit, which enables him to unite subtleness with bawdiness in an amazing way. RM 13

EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE

1830-1904

Animal Locomotion – Woman descending steps 1887

14

MARCEL DUCHAMP

Nu descendant un escalier by Marcel Duchamp is the most famous painting of the Dada painter, sculptor and author. Before he presented the painting at the 1912 Salon des Indépendants, it was rejected by the Cubists as too futuristic. In a 1961 Interview with the curator Katherine Kuh Duchamp said about the painting: "In 1912 ... the idea of describing the movement of a nude coming downstairs while still retaining static visual means to do this, particularly interested me. The fact that I had seen chronophotographs of fencers in action and horse galloping (what we today call stroboscopic photography) gave me the idea for the Nude. It doesn't mean that I copied these photographs. The Futurists were also interested in somewhat the same idea, though I was never a Futurist. And of course the motion picture with its cinematic techniques was developing then too. The whole idea of movement, of speed, was in the air."

Nu descendant un escalier colour reproduction, pochoir-coloured, and French 5-centimes stamp on paper, December 1937 35 x 20 cm / 13 3/4 x 7 7/8 in. signed and dated 'Dec 37' lower centre

At the legendary Armory Show in New York in 1913 it caused a sensation. The lawyer and art dealer Frederic C. Torrey acquired the painting at the Armory Show and placed it in his house in Berkeley. Before he sold it to the collectors Louise and Walter Conrad Ahrensberg in 1919, he had a copy made. The Arensbergs bequeathed the original to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1954.

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) was one of the pioneers of photography. The Englishman became famous in the United States for his large format landscape photographs. But his life work was making the movement of Man and animal visible. He constructed up to 24 cameras, which he placed in a row, releasing one after the other. He let animals, children, nude and clothed women and men walk past, or ascend and descend steps. In the 1880s he took more than 100,000 photos, which he called "Animal Locomotion".

In 1937 Duchamp planned an edition, consisting of a pochoir-coloured reproduction of the painting, with a French 5 Cent stamp, signed and dated by the artist, placed below the image. Originally 250 examples were planned, but Marcel Duchamp realised only very few. PvE 15

Photography is dead. Long live Painting digital inkjet-print on watercolour paper, 1995 82,5 x 105,5 cm image./ 88 x 110,5 cm paper 32 1/2 x 41 1/2 in. image/ 34 5/8 x 43 1/2 in. paper signed and dated lower right, numbered '# 19' lower left edition of 45

16

DAVID HOCKNEY

David Hockney began to deal intensively with photography in the early 1980s. He created collages with photographs, which he combined in cubist tableaus, challenging the viewer's usual perception. In Photography is dead. Long live Painting he refers to himself, i.e. a work created by himself. To friends who were ill, Hockney sent a painted bouquet of flowers, one went to Jonathan Silver, who contracted cancer in 1995. The 13year old Silver had made the acquaintance of the older Hockney in 1960. Soon between the artist and Silver, who went on to become one the most successful textile entrepreneurs of Great Britain, a close friendship developed, which lasted until Silver's death in 1997. In 1987 Silver acquired the old textile factory Salts Mill in Yorkshire, renovated it and filled it with new life with offices, shops, restaurants and Gallery 1853. It houses Silver's collection, the largest collection of Hockney's works worlwide which, with 400 works, offers an extensive overview of all periods of the

artist's oeuvre. Photography is dead. Long live Painting is composed of various elements: a white table with a white cardboard placed on it function as a stage for a special still life. On the left side stands a brown vase with sunflowers. Next to it is the watercolour Sunflowers for Jonathan, which Hockney painted for Silver, on which he also painted a bouquet of sunflowers in the same arrangement. But on the watercolour only the upper third of the vase is visible. To complete it, the artist placed another sheet of paper on the table, and complemented the missing part of the vase on it. Thus a ‘real’ vase and a painted vase with sunflowers are mirrored. Hockney photographed the whole and thus joined it again in one medium. For Hockney, painting and photography are intrinsically tied, and the manifold variations and possibilities with the different mediums and perspectives have fascinated Hockney in all work periods: "Photography came out of painting....and is now going back to it". SD 17

FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES Saturn Devouring his Son 1821-1823 Museo del Prado, Madrid

18

1746 - 1828

REBECCA HORN

Goya’s Augenwirbel In Goyas Augenwirbel (Goya's eye vortex) the reference to Goya is illustrated in the title, and in the swirling colours the vortex and the eye are easily discerned. However, it refers to the eye of Saturn in Goya's painting Saturn devouring his son. Goya's works, combining the horrors of reality with dream images, are pointing forward towards modernity and are seen as important precursors of surrealism.

pencil and acrylic on paper, 2015 40 x 30 cm / 15 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. signed and dated lower right titled lower centre

Goya's painting of Saturn devouring his child is an especially impressive example for the expressive, surrealist elements in his works. One of the wide open eyes, showing a hint of lunacy in the violent god, served as a prototype for Rebecca Horn's painting. The way she rotates the eye is exemplary for the main theme in her oeuvre: transformation, chronological changes, constant movement. On a mythological level, that is also the theme of Goya's picture: the Roman god Saturn is also the Greek Chronos, time itself, and it is time that devours its children. For the possible symbolic and philosophic thoughts which tie in with this concept, Rebecca Horn finds an expression which is as concentrated as it is poetic. RM

Paintings on paper, usually dominated by shades of blue and black, have gained an important position in Rebecca Horn's oeuvre of the last few years. The gestural painting, non-objective at first glance, upon closer inspection often reveals itself to be representational, in any case always a kind of structural picture of space, time and movement. Rebecca Horn is an artist who intensively deals with art history and newly connects and interprets motifs, metaphors and symbols in her own cosmos of images. 19

KASIMIR MALEVICH

1878 - 1935

Red Square (Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions) 1915 State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg

20

IMI KNOEBEL

In the recent works, parts of which Knoebel presented this year in the exhibition ‘Malewitsch zu Ehren’ (Honouring Malevich), the artist again takes up this reference to Malevich. Number 112 assembles two geometric elements to a colour plate, a white rectangle with a slanted red rectangle on top. This time Knoebel refers to the red square by Malevich. Like Malevich, who brings movement into the composition by placing the square in a slightly off-centre position on the white ground, and makes the suprematist space comprehensible for the viewer, Knoebel upsets the severity and balance in his work with the slightly trapezoid shape of the red colour field. It seems as though Knoebel's reference is not only directed at Malevich, but also at the American painters of Hard Edge and Shaped Canvasses, artists such as Ellsworth Kelly or Frank Stella, to name just two.

Number 112 acrylic on aluminium, 2014 129 x 97,5 x 4,5 cm 50 3/4 x 38 1/2 x 1 3/4 in.

Already during his studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Beuys in the 1960s Imi Knoebel intensely dealt with the oeuvre of Kasimir Malevich. The Russian constructivist's pivotal work, the black square on white, in its monumentalization and the radical break with any form of composition or representation of painting,was a decisive experience for the young student, as for many other painters of his generation. Despite the various studies of the constructive geometric painting of the Russian avantgarde, from the Bauhaus to the American Abstract Expressionists and the minimalists, Imi Knoebel was dealing with the question of organizing space and colour in the picture, with non-representational composition well-nigh in the musical sense.

However, Knoebel has hidden another reference to Kasimir Malevich in the series of which this work is part. He has given a picture with a similar composition as Nr. 112 the title Una's Haus. Thus he invested the severely geometric constructive composition with an immediate representational connotation, which in an ironic manner reconciles the aloofness of the non-representational Suprematism with the viewer's wish for a recognizable image. Una is not only the name of Knoebel's granddaughter, but it was also the name of Malevich's daughter, derived from ‘UNOWIS’, the name of the artist group he founded, which means ‘Confirmors of New Art’. RM 21

PAUL KLEE

1879 - 1940

Alter Klang 1925 Kunstmuseum Basel

22

HEINZ MACK

Hommage à Paul Klee acrylic and silver bronze on canvas 1991/2014 132 x 162 cm / 52 x 63 3/4 in.

Still in Tunesia, Klee painted the first watercolours which combined colour fields with naturalistic elements. He soon began to calculate his pictures with mathematical precision. In the 1920s and 30s, the virtuosic violinist created colour field paintings influenced by music, such as the painting Alter Klang (Old Sound) of 1925. Heinz Mack, the light artist, with Otto Piene founder of the art movement ZERO, explores the interaction of space and light, art and technology. Light and shade, structure and reflection are the main factors in his work. Like Klee, Mack also created important art in Africa: in 1968 he placed aluminium steles in the Sahara, in 1976 he ‘engraved’ a grid of 5 by 25 meters in the Algerian desert.

Paul Klee, one of the most poetic artists of the 20th century and a master of colour, discovered colour for his own art only during his journey to Tunis in 1914. It caused an explosion of creativity and the artist noted in his diary "Colour has me". Another important influence on Klee was Robert Delaunay, whom he met in 1912 in Paris. Delaunay wrote in an article, which Klee translated for the art periodical Der Sturm: "Nature is permeated by a rhythm which in its diversity cannot be confined ". In Paris Klee had seen Delaunay's new pictures in a style he called "splintered cubism", with which he wanted to create new "pure" painting with non-representational rhythmic colour harmonies.

Like Klee's Alter Klang, Mack's Hommage à Paul Klee of 1991 has a grid structure. The alternate, exactly calculated use of black, white and silver colour causes different reflections, which change with the light and the movement of the viewer. On the reverse, Mack wrote: "Africa still in my mind". Thus, his time in Africa still lingers on in Mack's consciousness and in his works, and links him, as does the grid, with Paul Klee. PvE 23

EUGÈNE DELACROIX

1798 - 1863

Chasse aux lions oil sketch, c. 1854 1855 Musée d’Orsay, Paris

24

FRANZ MARC

Löwenjagd nach Delacroix woodcut on laid paper, 1913/1984 25 x 27,2 cm / 9 7/8 x 10 3/4 in. numbered 26/30 with blind stamp of the estate trustee Otto Stangl edition of 30 + 2

compositions, which gradually shift from the representational to the abstract can be explained by the search for the essence of nature: the vitality and spiritual energy, which become manifest in all animate beings. By focussing on the contours and lines of movement of the painting's dramatic action in the woodcut, he virtually created a diagram of its active forces.

Franz Marc's Lion Hunt refers to the painting with the same title by Eugène Delacroix, which is presumed to be an outstanding example for the "neo-baroque painting" of French romanticism, opposedf to academic classicism. Marc has repeatedly named Delacroix as an example for painting which searches for the essence of movement and life, and seeks to break free from the restraints of formal representation.

This is another decisive element in Marc's artistic concept: he no longer wanted to depict nature or interpret the visible in an expressionist manner, with subjective shapes and colours, his aim rather was to capture the essence of these sentiments and phenomena. What he expected as a result is found in his writings of the years 1912 and 1913: "Absolute Painting": "The objects talk: in the objects is a will and shape. [...] and we artists sense this shape; a demon lets us look between the crevices of the world, and in dreams he leads us behind the colourful stage of the world."

However, here the lines and dynamism were what interested Marc in the vibrating swirl of colours in the Delacroix painting. It seems surprising that he put aside the decided colourist Delacroix and emphasized the expressiveness of the lines via the medium of the woodcut. However, it is consistent with the development of Marc's oeuvre. The

While for Delacroix the task of painting still was to portray nature exemplarily perceivable, though heightened and intensified, Marc already strove in the still representational to formulate something innate in painting and art. The step from abstraction to non-representation in his work was imminent. RM 25

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

1774 - 1840

Dorflandschaft bei Morgenbeleuchtung 1822, Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin

26

HIROYUKI MASUYAMA

Caspar David Friedrich: Dorflandschaft bei Morgenbeleuchtung –1822 lightbox / montage from c. 800 photos, 2007 55 x 71 x 4 cm / 21 5/8 x 28 x 1 5/8 in. verso signed, dated and numbered 1/5 edition of 5 + 1 AP

As he was wont to do Caspar David Friedrich used numerous sketches, which he created during his walking tours and travels, as the basis of the painting. For the hills extending into the plain from left and right, and for the mountain range, he adapted drawings made during a walking tour in the Bohemian mountains in 1810. He drew the oak and other groups of trees in 1809, while he was in Breesen in the Mecklenburg lake district. In his studio Friedrich then composed an imaginary landscape from different sketches. Hiroyuki Masuyama has recreated Friedrich's landscape and proceeded in a similar way. He composed the scene from 800 single nature photograps, which he took in Germany in the footsteps of Friedrich – and has come amazingly close to the original, including the wealth of details. The work is mounted on a lightbox, which illuminates it from within and gives it additional depth.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) was one of the precursors of modernism. He was one of the first artists who did not paint their pictures on commission, but as they liked and then sought to find buyers for them. And like no other artist of his time, he knew how to paint – and evoke – human emotions. The painting Village Landscape in Morning Light (1822) by Caspar David Friedrich has a special place in the oeuvre of this major and still most famous artist of early Romanticism. There is no other among his paintings with such a multitude of details, often only noticeable on closer inspection.

Masuyama, who also recreated works by J.M.W. Turner, brings historical, major art works back into our focus using modern techniques, and impressively demonstrates the artistic possibilities of modern photography. In a time in which the influence of Man causes the destruction of nature, Mauyama shows us its beauty, just as Friedrich did 200 years earlier. PvE 27

REMBRANDT HARMENSZOON VAN RIJN Jupiter and Antiope 1659

28

1606 - 1669

PABLO PICASSO

Faune dévoilant une femme sugarlift aquatint and scraper on laid Montval, June 12, 1936 32,3 x 41,5 cm image / 34,9 x 45 cm paper 12 3/4 x 16 3/8 in. image / 13 3/4 x 17 3/4 in. paper signed lower right edition of 260 overall edition 313 prints on three different papers in three sizes

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, one of the most important and famous Dutch artists of the Baroque era, is known for his paintings as much as for his masterly prints, mostly etchings. In a letter to his patron Constantin Huygens, who procured important commissions for him from the Royal court in The Hague, Rembrandt expressed what he was striving for in his art: "de meeste en de natuurlijkste beweegelijkheid" – the highest and most natural mobility.

Like Rembrandt, Picasso was a master of prints; he unconcernedly combined the techniques he had learnt, mostly by observing his printer Mourlot. Rembrandt's etching Jupiter and Antiope of 1659 inspired Picasso to create the aquatint of the faun unveiling a woman. Both have depicted the sleeping woman in a seductive pose; in Rembrandt's version she fills out the foreground, Picasso has placed her on the right side and only drew her outline.

Thus one of the characteristics of his art is the dramatic and lively depiction of a scene without the wooden formality found in the works of his contemporaries, and the deep sympathy he had for his fellow men, be they rich or poor. Another typical feature of Rembrandt's works is the use of chiaroscuro, in his paintings as well as in his prints.

But while Rembrandt shows Jupiter in the guise of a satyr as an old man, Picasso depicted him as a young, virile faun squatting in the centre of the picture, giving the scene a more pronounced sexual connotation. The sunlight streaming into the room and the resulting shadows attest to the fact that Picasso was also a master of the chiaroscuro. PvE 29

LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER

1472 - 1553

Venus and Cupid c. 1530 Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie Berlin

30

PABLO PICASSO

Prompted by a catalogue, which his friend and art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler brought him, Picasso created a number of interpretations of Cranach paintings. Picasso was a master of printing techniques, which he unconcernedly combined. The aquatint and drypoint etching in six states was brought to the plate in the same posture as the figures in the painting by Cranach, but due to the printing process, the motif is mirrored, an effect intended by the artist. Picasso was planning an edition of the sixth and last state, after only three proofs had been printed, therefore the etched copper plate was galvanically plated with steel, so 66 prints could be made. The three proofs printed before the plate was steeled have an especially velvety black, which distinguishes them from the prints of the edition. The graphic work was produced in May 1949 during his stay in Paris with Françoise Gilot; his daughter Paloma had been born there on April 19. The choice of theme indicates that this was a happy time in the artist’s life.

Vénus et l’Amour, d’après Cranach aquatint and drypoint on Rives Velin paper, May 1949 78,5 x 43 cm Darstellung / 90,1 x 63,5 cm paper 31 3/8 x 16 3/4 in. image / 35 1/2 x 25 in. paper one of three trial proofs of the sixth and final state before steelfacing edition of 50

Like many artists, Picasso had copied old masters at the beginning of his training, but later he interpreted their motifs and made them his own. In 1947, the director of the Louvre had offered to hang some of Picasso’s paintings beside certain works selected by Picasso. The artist's worries that his own works might not stand up beside those of his great predecessors proved unfounded. It became clear that Picasso was renewing painting – at just as high a level as his predecessors. In that year, he had created the first Cranach variation, of David und Bathseba, 1526.

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), one of the major German painters of the Renaissance, created altarpieces, allegorical paintings and a large number of portraits of his contemporaries. He created the panel painting Venus and Cupid around 1530, he later painted several other versions. The works of Cranach the Elder are distinguished by a perfect composition and elegance and still inspire artists today.

Picasso said that he felt as though the artists he revered were present, standing behind him and watching him while he was working. PvE 31

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

distemper on reproduction on wood 2012 83,5 x 59,5 cm 32 7/8 x 23 1/2 in. verso signed and dated

distemper on reproduction on wood 2012 83,5 x 59,5 cm 32 7/8 x 23 1/2 in. verso signed and dated

distemper on reproduction on wood 2012 83,5 x 59,5 cm 32 7/8 x 23 1/2 in. verso signed and dated

Untitled distemper on reproduction on wood 2013 83,5 x 58,5 cm/ 32 7/8 x 23 in. verso signed and dated

FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES Caprichos 1793 to 1799, Folio 1

32

1746 - 1828

ARNULF RAINER

Untitled (Giotto and Others series) oil chalk and distemper on reproduction on wood 1998/99 121,5 x 81 cm / 47 7/8 x 31 7/8 in. verso signed and dated

In his oeuvre, Arnulf Rainer has always referred to already existing images, works of art or photographs. He always developed the new from the old and thus found a genuine pictorial language. The early works sometimes only allow a guess at what is underneath, the key focus is on the explosive power of his overpainting. Photographs of classical statues of antiquity, self portraits by Rembrandt and van Gogh or etchings by Goya are often the basis of "parasitic reworking", just like portraits from pictures of the Trecento, Quattrocento and the Renaissance. In these, the gestural brushstroke of the overpainting becomes more conciliatory, sometimes the artist even emphasizes the beauty and harmony of the old portraits or

amplifies an emotion of sorrow, for instance in figures taken from a Lamentation of Christ. The enlargement of the details Rainer has used here is recent. Which images were used is not always known, the artist himself often does not remember, but it is of no consequence. The significance lies in the atmospheric empathy with the expression of a figurative model, which he demonstrates, comments on, characterizes or psychologizes with his artistic means. This becomes especially evident in his overpainting of a self portrait by Goya, which the artist created as the first image of his famous series of etchings Caprichos. SD 33

VILHELM HAMMERSHØI

1864 - 1916

Dust dancing in the sun 1900 Ordrupgaard Museum, Charlottenlund, Denmark

34

SIMON SCHUBERT

Untitled (Licht in Schreibzimmer 1) Schubert is fascinated by the light infiltrating empty rooms in which time seems to stand still. Absence, disappearance and the inner perception of memories are recurring themes in Schubert's pictures and sculptures.

paper, 2015 50 x 35 cm / 19 5/8 x 13 3/4 in. verso signed and dated

In Hammershøi's paintings it is the atmosphere in particular, created by the emptiness and the light, a peculiar mixture of time at a standstill and the expectation of an event, which irritates the viewer, but also pulls him into this picture without action. The virtuosic design of this subtle mixture of physical and psychic perception of a mood, anticipating the changed world view of modernity, is the premise of the intended effect which Schubert takes up in his work. However, while Hammershøi in his time was influenced by 19th century naturalism and the sensualism of beginning modernity as a budding idea, he was not yet affected by the agitations of modern science and psychology, Schubert on the other hand, in his white light spaces of the early 21st century, reflects all the uncertainty which arises from the complexity of today's perception of the world and the present barrage of images. RM

Simon Schubert is known for the precise creative technique of folding with which he is able to create three-dimensional spaces even on a simple sheet of paper. His paper foldings evolve in an exceptional process – he treats the paper from the viewpoint of a sculptor and, by negative and positive folds, creates relief-like and plastic images. In a certain light the impression of room depth reveals itself with views of columns and doors, passageways and stairs. In the recent series of light spaces he intensifies his concept with regard to content as well as esthetics in works, which at the same time represent a reference to a painter of the 19th century. For Schubert's particular inspiration were the melancholy interiors of the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi. 35

GIORGIO MORANDI

1890 - 1964

Still Life 1957 Hamburg, Kunsthalle

36

GEORGE SEGAL

Morandi’s Still Life plaster, acrylic paint, wood, 1983 41 x 61 x 37 cm / 16 x 24 x 14 1/2 in.

In Morandi's Still Life Segal arranged the vessels as in a painting by Morandi of 1957, which might have been his model, though he surely wanted to evoke the "archetype" of the Morandi still life. However, here the objects are not molded or formed, but poured over with plaster and left white. In Segal's wall sculpture the vessels are placed in a room indicated by an angle, which is coloured in shades of blue and green – as though the colour had in fact been extracted from the objects. Furthermore, in this manner Segal heightens the contrast and the individualization of the objects in the composition.

In the late 1970s, George Segal began to refer to works of other modern artists. Until then, his oeuvre was characterized by figures cast in plaster, their de-personalized universality needing no colour. His increasing interest in the relations of space and light caused him to an integrate colour in his sculptural works. He focussed on artists who dealt with the physical presence of objects in space and their composition, uninfluenced by relevance. One of the most important positions in this regard is the painting of Giorgio Morandi, who in his still lifes over and over again created hardly changed, curiously colourless and meditative compositions of bottles, vases and other vessels. The de-colouring so typical of Morandi has its counterpart in the abstract white figures of Segal, who conducted similar experiments of de-personalization and reindividualisation.

The term "Still Life" literally already points to the intrinsic presence of life, of spirit in the represented objects, which are in reality dead ("nature morte") – a spiritual or metaphysical quality, whose meditative aspect is always emphasized in Morandi's painting. This is where Segal's interest in Morandi's hermetical pictures lies, which he retransfers into three-dimensionality – it seems as though he had taken the original objects from Morandi's studio to capture their spirit in the sculpture. RM 37

RENÉ BOYVIN

c. 1525 – after 1580

The Rape of Europe

(after Rosso Fiorentino)

c. 1545 - 1555

38

MONIKA SUPÉ

do not form the image itself, but their shadows, and only if the wires, apparently erratically scattered over the white surface, are illuminated by a source of light from a certain angle. Without that, there is an abstract tangle of short wires or anon-representational casting of shadows. Thus it is dependent on the perspective of the viewer, and of the light, whether a figurative drawing appears.

Alles ist eine Frage der Perspektive 4 (nach René Boyvin nach Rosso Fiorentino) wire on MDF-board and LED-spot 2015 80 x 75 x 25 cm 31 1/2 x 23 5/8 x 9 7/8 in.

In her artistic work, Monika Supé is preoccupied with graphic strategies, which she expands into the third dimension. In this manner she creates works which question the usual visual habits. Many of the three-dimensional drawings, shaped with wire, create doubts in the viewer whether it is a flat object or a corporeal one. In addition, the delicate construction of the works lends them a fleetingness and a quality suggesting movement, which are a delightful contrast to the sculptural form.

In this series Monika Supé has taken images of the Rape of Europe as templates. Here it is an engraving by René Boyvin, who in turn represented a motif from a mural created by Rosso Fiorentino in the palace of Fontainebleau in the 16th century. Engravings such as this were used in the Renaissance and the period of Mannerism to spread images and motifs, and were an abstraction of the original work. Although the engraving may aim to represent the original faithfully, it is still an independent work in another medium. Thus it is a reference, created to inspire and encourage other epigones and give an impression of the artistic splendour of a far-away work.

In the series Alles ist eine Frage der Perspektive (Everything is a question of perspective) Supé creates the ephemeral effect and the apparent movement by another artistic technique. The basis is also the drawing with wire, however, the wires

Monika Supé follows this tradition and at the same time comments the various possibilities of displaying and visualizing images, which depend not only on the image itself, but on the recipients and viewers, and thus from the perspective. RM 39

DANIEL BUREN

* 1938

Murs de peintures 1966 - 77 Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris

40

ROSEMARIE TROCKEL

Hommage to D.B. acrylic wool, 2014 60 x 70 cm 23 5/8 x 27 1/2 in.

Rosemarie Trockel's work is notably influenced by literature and shot through with references and indications of everyday culture, commercial art and design and – sometimes subliminal – commentaries on poetic and philosophic texts, film history and art. Crossing the lines between genres is an essential principle of her work, just as the connection of different themes, from mythological and scientific theories to the trivial things of daily life.

The fact that Buren also frequently uses fabric, leads to a twofold reference in Trockel's homage and to a kind of ‘reversed’ transfer. Because Trockel's usual way of citation is the transfer of the ‘brand’ to a panel painting, not the reproduction of the motif as a knitted picture or a length of fabric. Furthermore, the factual reference is an existing early (fabric) panel picture by Buren, which he repeatedly installed in his Murs de Peinture in the 1960s and 70s in many variations. Trockel also picked up this way of hanging single works as a wall tableau, so that her homage comes close to an appropriation.

It is an inadmissible restriction of her approach to focus Trockel's work on feminist issues. Nonetheless she became known by her early works in wool, which repeat common symbols or works of art history in the "female" medium of the knitted picture. Her appropriation of established images by the use of a "low" medium is also subtly applied in her Hommage to D.B.

That Rosemarie Trockel intends none of that, but with her homage makes a subtly ironic comment about the nature of the typically reproducible art of post modernism, which is dependent on her presentation, is revealed by the little mystery in the title, which becomes an open secret by the sheer prominence of the motif: hardly anyone will deliberate who ‘D.B.’ is – and if so, the effect of the ‘art brand’ will disintegrate from the other side. RM

‘D.B.’ is of course the French artist Daniel Buren, whose striped pictures, wallpapers, installations or textiles have by now attained an iconic status despite their simplicity and formal severity, for they possess an inimitably high recognition value. However, from time to time a doubt forms on whether one is confronted with a work by Buren or ‘only’ a striped surface. 41

ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

1901 - 1966

Le nez 1949 Sammlung Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris

42

ROSEMARIE TROCKEL

Ohne Titel (Set F) silkscreen on paper, 2000 59,2 x 84 cm / 23 3/8 x 33 in. signed lower right and numbered lower left 171/250

In Rosemarie Trockel's oeuvre recurring, slightly changed motifs in various mediums form a connection between the works. The resulting, increasingly complex network of relations suggests correlations of significance and is a form of selfreference, which is sometimes difficult to distinguish from references to other symbols and works of art.

The hardly visible profile of the turned head makes identification impossible and points to the deindividualisation and dissolution of the figure, which is also at the centre of Giacometti's oeuvre. In contrast, the grotesque emphasis of the nose, ultimately only a mask, an appropriation of personality, leads to the other extreme, overindividualisation.

The head of a person with an overlong nose, seen in profile from somewhat behind, is one of these recurring motifs, and it is exactly the diffuse and fuzzy image which allows numerous connotations. Neither gender nor age of the person are definitely discernible, the only distinctive feature, the overlong nose, might in reality be just a mask. The connotations range from Cyrano de Bergerac to Pinocchio, from the plague masks of medieval times to Alberto Giacometti's Le Nez. It is in fact that enigmatic sculpture between mask and fetish, which Trockel refers to.

The body and the deformation of the body are of great significance in Giacometti's as in Trockel's work, for just like gender and age they are essential for self-perception and how we are perceived by others, i.e. a prerequisite for being at all. This perceivable appearance is manipulated by behaviour, clothing and every other form of mask. The corporeal appearance is always only a temporary materialisation of the mental image; it tends to disappear, as in the dissolution of the physical form by Giacometti or by the removal of Trockel's mask. RM 43

ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER

1880 - 1938

Tinzenhorn – Zügenschlucht bei Monstein 1919/1920 Kirchner Museum Davos

44

BERND ZIMMER

Kirchner reloaded: Tinzenhorn IX acrylic on canvas, 2014/15 130 x 160 cm / 51 1/8 x 63 in. verso signed, dated and titled

Bernd Zimmer also founded an artist group with like-minded friends as a young man. In 1977 in Berlin, Zimmer, Rainer Fetting, Helmut Middendorf, Salomé and others called themselves the ‘Junge Wilde’ (Young Wild). Their paintings were temperamental, colourful, expressive and representational – at a time when abstraction was the measure of all things and figurative painting was frowned upon. The paragons of the Young Wild were the artists of the Brücke. In 2010, Zimmer again gave his attention to Kirchner, whom he calls "a special point of reference". The Tinzenhorn mountain, painted by Kirchner several times, especially interested him. Zimmer created a whole series of works depicting the Tinzenhorn. In the comparison with Kirchner's works, Bernd Zimmer passes with flying colours. PvE

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, one of the founders of the ‘Brücke’, was one of the great reformers of painting in Germany, whose influence went far beyond all frontiers, and partly continues today. Intially he had gone to Davos because of his precarious health, but in the Swiss alps he soon became a passionate painter of the surrounding mountains and the local people. The artist was overwhelmed by the majestic mountains, the shadowy valleys, the dark woods and the clear brooks. He undauntedly transferred the bright colours and forceful brushstroke of Expressionism to these motifs.

45

COPYRIGHTS

S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S.

4 Diego Velazquez . . . . . 6 Duchamp Fontaine . . . . 6 Gerrit Rietveld . . . . . . . 10 Venus von Milo . . . . . 12 Leonardo da Vinci . . . 18 Francisco de Goya . . . 20 Malewitsch . . . . . . . . 24 Eugène Delacroix . . . . 26 Caspar David Friedrich 30 Cranach . . . . . . . . . . 36 Morandi . . . . . . . . . . 42 Giacometti . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

©akg-images / De Agostini Picture Lib. / G. Dagli Orti zeitgenössische Photographie / contemporary photograph ©akg-images / De Agostini Picture Lib. / M. Carrieri ©akg-images / Erich Lessing ©akg-images ©akg-images / Rabatti - Domingie © akg-images / Erich Lessing ©akg-images / Laurent Lecat ©akg-images ©bpk / Gemäldegalerie, SMB / Jörg P. Anders ©bpk | Hamburger Kunsthalle | Elke Walford ©Succession Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris + ADAGP, Paris) 2015

VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2015: S. 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. 6, 13, 15 . . . . . . . . . S. 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. 21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. 36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. 40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. 41, 43 . . . . . . . . . . . S. 45 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. 29, 31 . . . . . . . . . . . S. 37 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Gerrit Rietveld Marcel Duchamp:© Succession Marcel Duchamp / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015 Wim Delvoye Jim Dine Rebecca Horn Imi Knoebel Heinz Mack Giorgio Morandi Daniel Buren Rosemarie Trockel Bernd Zimmer Picasso: ©Succession Picasso / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015 Segal: ©The George and Helen Segal Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015

S. S. S. S. S. S. S.

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

©Fernando Botero ©Michael Craig-Martin ©David Hockney ©Hiroyuki Masuyama ©Monika Supé ©Arnulf Rainer ©Simon Schubert

5 .... 7 .... 16 . . . 27 . . . 39 . . . 32, 33 35 . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

46

PUBLICATION DETAILS

Prices upon request. We refer to our sales and delivery conditions. Dimensions: height by width. © Galerie Thomas 2015

Coordination of the exhibition: Dr. Ralph Melcher Catalogue editing: Dr. Ralph Melcher Patricia von Eicken Texts : SD – Dr. Sarah Dengler PvE – Patricia von Eicken RM – Dr. Ralph Melcher Photography : Walter Bayer Translation : Patricia von Eicken Design : Sabine Urban, Gauting

GALERIE THOMAS

GALERIE THOMAS MODERN

Expressionism & Classic Modern

Modern & Contemporary

Tuerkenstrasse 16 · 80333 Munich · Germany · Phone+ 49 - 89 - 29 000 80 · Fax + 49 - 89 - 2 9 0 0 0 8 8 8 Mo - Fr 9 -18 Sa 10 -18 Uhr · info @ galerie -thomas.de · www.galerie -thomas.de · modern@ galerie-thomas.de

GALERIE THOMAS GALERIE THOMAS MODERN