Lot Essay
"For a time I loved many colours populating my canvas; later I began using less, so as to achieve a stronger, more uniform impression. Now it is enough for me to place a few small coloured accents on a large surface. Everybody can paint red or blue, but what painting actually is, is shown in the areas in between, which cannot be called painting in the usual sense." (Quoted in: Emil Schumacher, Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz, October 1976, p. 13).
Emil Schumacher thus describes his increasingly monochromatic palette, culminating in the red paintings of which this painting is a salient example. This late maturing, in which he focused and restrained his style progressively, can be understood in terms of the artist making a fresh start of his career after having abandoned it as a result of the Second World War. During the 1950's Schumacher's art was undoubtedly informed by the international developments of Art Informel, by such arists as Wols, Dubuffet and Fautrier. The existential questions that were being posed all over Europe at the end of war, were of particular relevance to an artist who had denied himself a creative outlet during this period. Lacking a comparable tradition of an avant-garde in Germany during the war, artists were looking either abroad or back at the period preceding the war for inspiration, in particular at the German Expressionists, whose art had attempted to make more immediate, raw renderings of personal experiences. Art Brut or the Informel do share a tendency for abstraction and the calling up of the subconscious with Schumacher, though his concern for colour as a carrier of meaning set him apart from the other artist's of his generation: "Colour and through colours the inner states of mind - since my childhood it has never left me. Again and again I paint my picture. That is my calling and my joy." (Quoted in: Ibid. p. 38)
In the present work, the thickly impastoed paint, applied in various tones of red, is interrupted by dark lines carved into the surface, recalling geological formations seen from above. The layers of paint are uncovered to reveal the cold, dark blue of the bottom layer, contrasting with the warm red of the top layer. Like seismic fault lines, or the breaking apart of dried clay, it creates tension at the edges, at the lines separating the various colour planes. Paint is here the essential, the primeaval element, not just the tool for creating an image, but rather the subject of art itself. Preoccupied with the visceral, earthy aspect of painting, Schumacher's calligraphic incisions relate to the language of the subconscious: never fully decipherable, yet strangely meaningful.
It is interesting to note that this picture was once owned by Michel Tapié, champion of the Informel art movement. He recognised Schumacher as a major protagonist of his doctrine and was one of the first writers to promote him as such.
Emil Schumacher thus describes his increasingly monochromatic palette, culminating in the red paintings of which this painting is a salient example. This late maturing, in which he focused and restrained his style progressively, can be understood in terms of the artist making a fresh start of his career after having abandoned it as a result of the Second World War. During the 1950's Schumacher's art was undoubtedly informed by the international developments of Art Informel, by such arists as Wols, Dubuffet and Fautrier. The existential questions that were being posed all over Europe at the end of war, were of particular relevance to an artist who had denied himself a creative outlet during this period. Lacking a comparable tradition of an avant-garde in Germany during the war, artists were looking either abroad or back at the period preceding the war for inspiration, in particular at the German Expressionists, whose art had attempted to make more immediate, raw renderings of personal experiences. Art Brut or the Informel do share a tendency for abstraction and the calling up of the subconscious with Schumacher, though his concern for colour as a carrier of meaning set him apart from the other artist's of his generation: "Colour and through colours the inner states of mind - since my childhood it has never left me. Again and again I paint my picture. That is my calling and my joy." (Quoted in: Ibid. p. 38)
In the present work, the thickly impastoed paint, applied in various tones of red, is interrupted by dark lines carved into the surface, recalling geological formations seen from above. The layers of paint are uncovered to reveal the cold, dark blue of the bottom layer, contrasting with the warm red of the top layer. Like seismic fault lines, or the breaking apart of dried clay, it creates tension at the edges, at the lines separating the various colour planes. Paint is here the essential, the primeaval element, not just the tool for creating an image, but rather the subject of art itself. Preoccupied with the visceral, earthy aspect of painting, Schumacher's calligraphic incisions relate to the language of the subconscious: never fully decipherable, yet strangely meaningful.
It is interesting to note that this picture was once owned by Michel Tapié, champion of the Informel art movement. He recognised Schumacher as a major protagonist of his doctrine and was one of the first writers to promote him as such.