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Lot Essay
‘I always thought of my painting’ (Konrad Klapheck)
Previously held in the collection of Wolfgang Hahn, Die Stufen der Ewigkeit (The Steps of Eternity) (1961) exemplifies Konrad Klapheck’s sleek and deadpan aesthetic. Corrugated patterns fill the canvas to form a ziggurat-like structure that reaches towards the infinite. Atop its plateaus rest ovoid basins in various colours. The painting’s surface is smooth and methodical, yet its title evokes the excitement and theatre of the cycle of life. Klapheck intended his titles to be both illustrative and open-ended, and, indeed, despite the sense of detachment that characterises much of his oeuvre, Die Stufen der Ewigkeit is a study in visual lyricism. In 1966, the painting was included in a major exhibition of his work at the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover.
Born in Düsseldorf in 1935, Klapheck—whose solo exhibition at the Museum Schloss Cappenberg, Selm, is currently on view—studied at the city’s celebrated art academy under the Surrealist artist Bruno Goller. Coming of age within an art world that favoured bold abstraction, Klapheck eschewed the period’s aesthetic tendencies, instead embracing what he referred to as ‘prosaic Supergegenständlichkeit’ or superobjectivity (K. Klapheck quoted in D. Roelstraete, ‘L’homme Machine: The Art of Konrad Klapheck’, Artforum, vol. 50, no. 7, March 2012, online). As a young artist, Klapheck cast his eye towards mechanical devices and tools, which he depicted in a graphic and hyper-realistic manner, defined by smooth, glossy surfaces as seen in Die Stufen der Ewigkeit.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Klapheck visited Paris on several occasions, where he encountered the art of French Modernists including André Breton, Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp. His work took on a decidedly surreal quality. Removed from their usual surroundings, Klapheck transformed objects into uncanny, abstract entities, recalling the strangeness of Duchamp’s Readymades: recognisable objects that were similarly decontextualised. The three vessel-like forms seen in Die Stufen der Ewigkeit recall Duchamp’s notorious sculpture Fountain, for which the artist submitted a porcelain urinal signed R. Mutt to a major exhibition in 1917. Like Duchamp’s work, Klapheck’s motifs appear as if they ought to contain a secret symbolism, when, in reality, their ‘insistent thingness’ denies any such interpretation (B. Schwabsky, ‘Konrad Klapheck: Edward Thorp Gallery’, Artforum, vol. 32, no. 6, February 1994, p. 88). His paintings are multivalent, mysterious, and—as the present work’s ascent to eternity proposes—enduring. ‘If you find happiness in painting, then you are on the right path’, said Klapheck. ‘If you can recognise yourself in the work you’ve created, if a piece of you, of your best self, has flowed into it, and you’ve trusted that guiding star, then that’s the path to success’ (K. Klapheck quoted in ‘Café Deutschland: Konrad Klapheck in conversation’, Städel Museum, 6 May 2015, online).
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Matter in Motion: Works from an Important Private Swiss Collection
Across our 20th / 21st Century London Evening Sale, Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale, Impressionist and Modern Art Day and Works on Paper Sale and Post-War and Contemporary Art Online sale in London this season, Christie’s is delighted to present Matter in Motion: Works from an Important Private Swiss Collection. Led by Cy Twombly’s Untitled (Rome) (1961)—an explosion of painterly joy created in his most celebrated period—this diverse array of works offers a remarkable snapshot of the post-war avant-garde in Europe.
These paintings, drawings and sculptures have been unseen in public since the collection was assembled in the 1970s and 1980s. They were acquired from important galleries of the time such as Galerie Bonnier in Geneva and Galerie Stadler in Paris, and—in the case of the works by Twombly, Hans Hartung, Konrad Klapheck and Ernst Wilhelm Nay—from the esteemed Nouveau Réalisme and Fluxus collector Wolfgang Hahn, chief conservator at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne. Much of Hahn’s holdings were acquired by the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (mumok) in Vienna in 1978, becoming a central part of the museum’s permanent collection.
The vitality of Art Informel is on full display. From Twombly’s gestural brushwork to the tactile reliefs of Antoni Tàpies, paint becomes sculptural or even archaeological matter, leaping the boundaries between art and life. A superb Concetto spaziale (1960) by Lucio Fontana takes this materiality to its transcendent climax, with the artist punching holes through the canvas to reach a new dimension.
Like Twombly, Sam Francis was an American in Europe: his Red, Yellow, Blue (1957) exemplifies his fusion of Abstract Expressionist ideas with the lyrical light and colour of French painting. Hans Hartung, the German-French painter represented here by an elegant composition from 1952, forged his own language of Tachisme in the same medium, characterised by swift, calligraphic brushstrokes.
Other key names in the collection include the Nouveaux Réalistes Arman, César and Jean Tinguely. These artists sought to bridge the art-life divide with a radical approach to everyday objects, creating something of a European counterpart to Pop Art.
The German artist Konrad Klapheck explored related ideas of mechanisation and commerce. His visionary, dreamlike painting Die Stufen der Ewigkeit (The Steps of Eternity) (1961) presents a surreal scene with a Pop-art sheen, as indebted to Duchamp’s objets trouvés as it is to Klapheck’s deadpan ‘machine’ paintings.
Across a wide range of media, from works on paper and small-scale sculptures to rich, textural paintings, Matter in Motion: Works from an Important Private Swiss Collection forms a colourful survey of the ways in which artists brought material to life in post-war Europe, keeping pace with an era of dynamic societal, cultural and aesthetic change. They are complemented, finally, by two works from Alice Bailly: a pioneering Swiss artist of an earlier avant-garde era, involved in Fauvism, Dada and Cubism and known for her pictures embroidered in wool.
Previously held in the collection of Wolfgang Hahn, Die Stufen der Ewigkeit (The Steps of Eternity) (1961) exemplifies Konrad Klapheck’s sleek and deadpan aesthetic. Corrugated patterns fill the canvas to form a ziggurat-like structure that reaches towards the infinite. Atop its plateaus rest ovoid basins in various colours. The painting’s surface is smooth and methodical, yet its title evokes the excitement and theatre of the cycle of life. Klapheck intended his titles to be both illustrative and open-ended, and, indeed, despite the sense of detachment that characterises much of his oeuvre, Die Stufen der Ewigkeit is a study in visual lyricism. In 1966, the painting was included in a major exhibition of his work at the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover.
Born in Düsseldorf in 1935, Klapheck—whose solo exhibition at the Museum Schloss Cappenberg, Selm, is currently on view—studied at the city’s celebrated art academy under the Surrealist artist Bruno Goller. Coming of age within an art world that favoured bold abstraction, Klapheck eschewed the period’s aesthetic tendencies, instead embracing what he referred to as ‘prosaic Supergegenständlichkeit’ or superobjectivity (K. Klapheck quoted in D. Roelstraete, ‘L’homme Machine: The Art of Konrad Klapheck’, Artforum, vol. 50, no. 7, March 2012, online). As a young artist, Klapheck cast his eye towards mechanical devices and tools, which he depicted in a graphic and hyper-realistic manner, defined by smooth, glossy surfaces as seen in Die Stufen der Ewigkeit.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Klapheck visited Paris on several occasions, where he encountered the art of French Modernists including André Breton, Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp. His work took on a decidedly surreal quality. Removed from their usual surroundings, Klapheck transformed objects into uncanny, abstract entities, recalling the strangeness of Duchamp’s Readymades: recognisable objects that were similarly decontextualised. The three vessel-like forms seen in Die Stufen der Ewigkeit recall Duchamp’s notorious sculpture Fountain, for which the artist submitted a porcelain urinal signed R. Mutt to a major exhibition in 1917. Like Duchamp’s work, Klapheck’s motifs appear as if they ought to contain a secret symbolism, when, in reality, their ‘insistent thingness’ denies any such interpretation (B. Schwabsky, ‘Konrad Klapheck: Edward Thorp Gallery’, Artforum, vol. 32, no. 6, February 1994, p. 88). His paintings are multivalent, mysterious, and—as the present work’s ascent to eternity proposes—enduring. ‘If you find happiness in painting, then you are on the right path’, said Klapheck. ‘If you can recognise yourself in the work you’ve created, if a piece of you, of your best self, has flowed into it, and you’ve trusted that guiding star, then that’s the path to success’ (K. Klapheck quoted in ‘Café Deutschland: Konrad Klapheck in conversation’, Städel Museum, 6 May 2015, online).
***
Matter in Motion: Works from an Important Private Swiss Collection
Across our 20th / 21st Century London Evening Sale, Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale, Impressionist and Modern Art Day and Works on Paper Sale and Post-War and Contemporary Art Online sale in London this season, Christie’s is delighted to present Matter in Motion: Works from an Important Private Swiss Collection. Led by Cy Twombly’s Untitled (Rome) (1961)—an explosion of painterly joy created in his most celebrated period—this diverse array of works offers a remarkable snapshot of the post-war avant-garde in Europe.
These paintings, drawings and sculptures have been unseen in public since the collection was assembled in the 1970s and 1980s. They were acquired from important galleries of the time such as Galerie Bonnier in Geneva and Galerie Stadler in Paris, and—in the case of the works by Twombly, Hans Hartung, Konrad Klapheck and Ernst Wilhelm Nay—from the esteemed Nouveau Réalisme and Fluxus collector Wolfgang Hahn, chief conservator at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne. Much of Hahn’s holdings were acquired by the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (mumok) in Vienna in 1978, becoming a central part of the museum’s permanent collection.
The vitality of Art Informel is on full display. From Twombly’s gestural brushwork to the tactile reliefs of Antoni Tàpies, paint becomes sculptural or even archaeological matter, leaping the boundaries between art and life. A superb Concetto spaziale (1960) by Lucio Fontana takes this materiality to its transcendent climax, with the artist punching holes through the canvas to reach a new dimension.
Like Twombly, Sam Francis was an American in Europe: his Red, Yellow, Blue (1957) exemplifies his fusion of Abstract Expressionist ideas with the lyrical light and colour of French painting. Hans Hartung, the German-French painter represented here by an elegant composition from 1952, forged his own language of Tachisme in the same medium, characterised by swift, calligraphic brushstrokes.
Other key names in the collection include the Nouveaux Réalistes Arman, César and Jean Tinguely. These artists sought to bridge the art-life divide with a radical approach to everyday objects, creating something of a European counterpart to Pop Art.
The German artist Konrad Klapheck explored related ideas of mechanisation and commerce. His visionary, dreamlike painting Die Stufen der Ewigkeit (The Steps of Eternity) (1961) presents a surreal scene with a Pop-art sheen, as indebted to Duchamp’s objets trouvés as it is to Klapheck’s deadpan ‘machine’ paintings.
Across a wide range of media, from works on paper and small-scale sculptures to rich, textural paintings, Matter in Motion: Works from an Important Private Swiss Collection forms a colourful survey of the ways in which artists brought material to life in post-war Europe, keeping pace with an era of dynamic societal, cultural and aesthetic change. They are complemented, finally, by two works from Alice Bailly: a pioneering Swiss artist of an earlier avant-garde era, involved in Fauvism, Dada and Cubism and known for her pictures embroidered in wool.