Lot 527 D

“For Graubner, colour is both the medium and the content of painting. It is exclusively self-referential in his work. “Colour is subject matter enough for me”, he says, pursuing the richness of its realm, knowing full well that painting may make forays into that realm but can never exhaust it, in practice or in theory. What does the condensation of colour into an organism actually mean? Literally: the steady application or layering of bound pigments on a support, on paper or canvas in the course of the painting process. Since each layer will not necessarily be entirely covered by the next, the continuum of the condensation can be traced in areas of the painting that may remain unchanged or shine through. Prerequisite to this approach is sophisticated mastery of mixing paints, of colour washes and of working with binders and solvents. But even the supports themselves are layered, for instance, unsized paper or the vehicle the artist has devised for his Farbraumkörper, a voluminous layer of synthetic cotton that softly covers the stretcher behind the canvas. This allows the liquid paint to seep into the support while, at the same time, generating the effect of colour rising out of the depths to the surface of painting that is permeable to light and air.” (Uwe Wieczorek (ed.), Gotthard Graubner, Malerei, Painting, exhibition catalogue, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Düsseldorf 2010, p.20/21)