Günther Förg. Tupfenbilder

About

This exhibition displays Förg’s Spot Paintings, the artist’s final series made between 2005 – 2010 before he stopped painting in 2010 after suffering a stroke. In these works, the brushstroke itself become the main protagonist, representing an ultimate return to expressive painting, indicating a completion of sorts—a full-circle arrival at painting as a synthesis of experimentation, rooted in art history. The Spot Paintings were partially influenced by photographs Förg saw of Francis Bacon’s studio, which was covered in colorful blotches of paint created when the artist would wipe his brushes on the walls and door of the studio to remove excess paint. The contrasting colors within a bustling composition reflects the conceptual principles that underpinned Förg’s practice: a formal purism, a sense of the artwork as object and an architectural, analytical interest in space.

Günther Förg is one of the most significant German artists of the postwar generation. In the breadth of his production, from monochrome painting to color studies, from photography to wall paintings, from bronze reliefs to sculptures, Förg explored what critic Kirsty Bell describes as ‘the visual field,’ swiftly moving between mediums and series with an abruptness that so characteristically defined the artist and his work.

Image: Günther Förg, Untitled, 2009 ©️ Estate Günther Förg, Suisse / DACS 2022. Photo: Bernhard Strauss