Lot 602 D

Emil Schumacher's Banga belongs to a series of red pictures started in 1961. In this work phase the artist's reduction to only a few colours is seen, which increases the significance of their structure and qualities. Individual colour nuances develop their own character and are multifacetedly broken down.
Schumacher places particular value on the substance of the pigments which are produced by the artist himself. In Banga the black shines through the red in varying intensity, the thickly applied paint giving the impression of breaking through. The tension between the colours is multifaceted, they seem on the one hand to flow, weaving in and out of each, whilst at the same time forcefully repelling each other. A gesture of expressive vigour is manifest in the black lines which channels and powerfully structures the ground colour into individual tracks. The black lines come together to give a hazy figural composition which unfolds expressively.
''The juxtoposition of colour patches and vague, indeterminate forms is not enough for me. I seek a certain expression, as the flecks and lines do not have to be just flecks and lines per se. From the artistic standpoint, everything is independent of meaning. But the line, as I like it, must be so overgrown with meaning that it includes and excludes something. That it receives a meaning beyond its own meaning. That one can read and refine something. Not just approximately, but encrypted, not accurate in every detail. It is not about representations but rather allusions of what is seen.'' (Emil Schumacher, in: Bernhart Schwenk (ed.), Retrospektive Emil Schumacher, exhib.cat. Galerie National Jeu de Paume et al, Paris et al 1997, p. 129).