Stand 375
Announcing participation in this years TEFAF New York with a solo presentation of the German painter Raimund Girke (b. 1930 Lower Silesia - d. 2002 Cologne, Germany).
An influential figure of post-war German art, Raimund Girke first studied at the art school in Hanover before moving on to the Düsseldorf Art Academy with ZERO founders Otto Piene and Heinz Mack. Departing from Abstract Expressionism and initially influenced by the gestural-rhythmic abstraction of Art Informel, he became a forerunner of Analytical Painting committed to the investigation of the colour white. "White is emptiness, immateriality, calm and silence".
From 1956-7, reducing his palette to black and grey, Girke developed a painting style consisting of few colours and void of any figurative reference taking the work to the extremes of white in 1959. Brushstrokes increased in dynamism and force allowing vibration, rhythm and movement to flow through the materiality of the paint. Exploring the concepts of light, and colour his paintings are at once still and dynamic, meditative, and probing.
