拍品專文
The father of the present owners of Bildgleichung first saw the picture in an exhibition at the Städtisches Museum in Braunschweig, where it hung incongruously above a display of household objects from America. Such were the priorities of post-war Germany.
A month later, he confessed that the painting was still "going around my head" and on 28 January 1954, he bought it directly from Trökes. He then asked the artist to provide him with an account of the genesis of the work. Trökes wrote to him on 9 February 1954:
"What can I tell you about the Bildgleichnung? ... . You ask me what led me to it. I have to admit: nothing, other than painting a painting. ... . I prime the already white primed canvas with colours, with one colour or more, with stains, structures, sometimes with relatively fixed forms. I have no idea of the picture in progress, never. If I like the coloured canvas, I let it dry and then begin to paint. This can start as a purely formal exercise, and I think this was how it was with your picture with the written bands, beams, stripes, which were quickly placed and were the result of a certain feeling for tension, contrast, and balance. ... This happens until the picture offers itself to me, until I see something, but not a face in a paint splash, which would only be an interpretation of the splash. ... Now the painting almost makes itself. Now I accentuate, or push to the background, paint over or make more precise, identify, balance etc., until the painting is finished. ...
A month later, he confessed that the painting was still "going around my head" and on 28 January 1954, he bought it directly from Trökes. He then asked the artist to provide him with an account of the genesis of the work. Trökes wrote to him on 9 February 1954:
"What can I tell you about the Bildgleichnung? ... . You ask me what led me to it. I have to admit: nothing, other than painting a painting. ... . I prime the already white primed canvas with colours, with one colour or more, with stains, structures, sometimes with relatively fixed forms. I have no idea of the picture in progress, never. If I like the coloured canvas, I let it dry and then begin to paint. This can start as a purely formal exercise, and I think this was how it was with your picture with the written bands, beams, stripes, which were quickly placed and were the result of a certain feeling for tension, contrast, and balance. ... This happens until the picture offers itself to me, until I see something, but not a face in a paint splash, which would only be an interpretation of the splash. ... Now the painting almost makes itself. Now I accentuate, or push to the background, paint over or make more precise, identify, balance etc., until the painting is finished. ...