Günther Förg (1952-2013)
Günther Förg (1952-2013)
Günther Förg (1952-2013)
Günther Förg (1952-2013)
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Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's… Read more
Günther Förg (1952-2013)

Untitled

Details
Günther Förg (1952-2013)
Untitled
signed and dated 'Förg 91 (on the reverse)
acrylic on lead on wood
35 3/8 x 23 5/8in. (90 x 60cm.)
Executed in 1991
Provenance
Ben Brown Fine Arts, London.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2015.
Exhibited
Hong Kong, Ben Brown Fine Arts, Aspects of German Art Revisited (Part One), 2015.
London, Galerie Luxembourg & Dayan, Förg: From and Against Modernism, 2019 (illustrated in colour, unpaged).
Special notice
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. These lots have been imported from outside the EU or, if the UK has withdrawn from the EU without an agreed transition deal, from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.
Further details
The work is recorded in the Günther Förg archive with the number WVF.91.B.0216.
We are most grateful to Mr. Michael Neff from the Estate of Günther Förg for the information he has kindly provided.

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Lot Essay

Painted in 1991, Untitled is a resplendent example of Günther Förg’s magisterial lead paintings, the hallmark series of his practice which he began in the early 1980s. The work is divided into two unequal yet balanced fields: a thin ribbon of pale pink next to a larger field of teal. With its vertical orientation, the abstract painting conjures a window, a portal to an unknown land. Förg chose to apply his pigments to a leaded surface, and the caustic ground produced mercurial and spectacular reactions of chromatic brilliance. Using lead, the artist explained, gave ‘the colour a different density and weight... with the normal canvas you often have to kill the ground, give it something to react against. With the metals you already have something - its scratches, scrapes’ (G. Förg, quoted in D. Ryan, Talking Painting, Karlsruhe 1997). Oxidised naturally by the elements, the lead generates its own abstract depths, dappled with iridescent patterns that operate in mesmeric counterpoint to the rigid strips of paint; the lustrous field of Untitled vibrates with energy. By recuperating the volatility of chance, Förg’s painting coveys a powerful physicality rooted directly in chemical combustion. Teeming with a raw, elemental power, the present work speaks directly to this cause.

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