Exhibition
Colour, Surface, Form. Landscapes by Gerhard Taubert (1928–2012)
25 Apr 2025 – 7 Jun 2025
Regular hours
- Friday
- 12:00 – 18:00
- Saturday
- 12:00 – 18:00
- Tuesday
- 12:00 – 18:00
- Wednesday
- 12:00 – 18:00
- Thursday
- 12:00 – 18:00
Free admission
Address
- Gipsstraße 3
- Berlin
Berlin - 10119
- Germany
Travel Information
- U-Bahn U8 Station „Weinmeisterstraße“, S-Bahn S5, S7, S9, S75 Station „Hackescher Markt“, Tram M1, M4, M5, M8
To mark Gallery Weekend, Galerie Poll will showcase, for the first time, works by Düsseldorfbased painter Gerhard Taubert, who died in 2012 at the age of eighty-four.
About
The exhibition includes paintings from various stages of Taubert’s career, which spanned from 1960 to 2000. In his landscapes, Taubert moves from carefully detailed groups of trees to olive groves, vineyards, and lavender fields, and ultimately to their most abstract form – just two bands of colour symbolising earth and sky.
His work is rooted in close observation of nature across different terrains, focusing on colour, rhythmic structures, and the moods of the atmosphere. Early on, he based his compositions on sketches drawn outdoors; later, he turned to photographs.
Though he began by working in oils, Taubert switched in the 1960s to acrylic paints developed in the United States. Highly opaque, these fast-drying paints were well suited to Taubert’s rapid way of working.
His structuring of space on the canvas reflects his unique perception of the world: when he was a child, an accident robbed him of sight in one eye. This loss led to his signature compositional style – rigorously juxtaposed fields, dominated by colour. Taubert observed his surroundings in all seasons and at different times of day, letting his gaze sweep across fields, through valleys, or over mountain landscapes.
One of his more striking techniques involved stretching gauze bandages over the canvas and then applying countless dabs of paint in a pointillist manner, creating an interplay of different colours through both layers of the composition. Over the years, his palette became simpler and more austere – but also brighter and more delicate, shaped by the light of the South. From 1987 to 2012, he maintained a studio in southern France in addition to his Düsseldorf studio.
Gerhard Taubert (1928–2012) took private painting lessons with Professor Burckhardt in his hometown of Altenburg from 1947 to 1948, after completing training as an insurance clerk. In 1948, he won the Maxim Gorki Prize in a painting competition held by the Soviet military administration. He used this scholarship to begin studying painting that same year at the University of Architecture and Fine Arts (Hochschule für Baukunst und Bildende Künste) in Weimar with Professors Hoffmann-Lederer and Herbig. From 1950 to 1952, he continued his studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf) with Professors Goller and Pankok. In 1971, Taubert was invited to a solo exhibition curated by Karl Ruhrberg at the headquarters of Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf. This exhibition marked his breakthrough after years of hardship. His works are held in private and public collections, including the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf and the collections of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt am Main and IBM Germany in Stuttgart.