Lot 607 R

Since the 1960s Hann Trier was engaged with the design of several large ceiling paintings - among them the ceiling picture in the White Hall of the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin in 1972, three ceiling pictures in the Philosophy Department of the University of Heidelberg, 1979, and a canopy in the central hall of Cologne City Hall's new building in 1980. With their unusual conceptional design they would be the inspiration for further large format and sequential works. After years of interest in baroque and rococo period ceiling paintings, certain stylistic elements flow into Trier's painting.
''The axially-chiastically-scaled compositions have theoretically no top and bottom, and could, on reconstructing the production process, be alternately hung differently. […] Up to a certain extent the canvas makes itself available to the two-handed gestural act of painting through rotation, yet the particular symmetry structure is also attainable by the assembly of several sub-divided pictures, such as in „Eins/Zwei/Drei/Vier Blau“ (1983). This piece is strikingly characterised by its interplay of symmetry patterns on several levels (in the figurative sense). The constitutive small structure - ie. the serial arrangement determined by the two-handed style - is present in so many different varieties such as the striking yellow ridges of the lower corner shapes and the feathery heightenings of the colour key above; determined by the image composition, the large format is ultimately only to be understood from the small structure, whether as their sum, or as a reaction. One could speak of the tautology of the symmetrical since the colour has a significant share in the game of repetition and response. […] In Trier's hands the principle of symmetry becomes an instrument which helps to affirm the superiority of phantasy over geometrical order, of the pulsating activity over bridling classifiication. But at the same time it preserves the function of a spiritual bond that holds together the abundance of phenomena.'' (Peter Anselm Riedl, „Cieli aperti“ und „Cieli riportati“, Zur künstlerischen Entwicklung Hann Triers seit den mittleren sechziger Jahren, in: Sabine Fehlemann (ed.), Hann Trier, Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, Cologne 1990, p.47f.)