Lot 412 D

'Jardin d'un Monastère Etüde No. ' is the first in a series of eight paintings with the same title completed by Günter Fruhtrunk in the early 1960s. The series features various colour executions of one motif. In 'Etude No. 1' the black lines are framed by narrow yellow and blue contours and thereby given a particular accentuation. The creation of the picture series took place at a time when a transition in his work was taking effect. ''Fruhtrunk begins disecting his delicate constructions, made up of geometrically differently shaped internal elements, into anonymous structures, in which the process of limiting and delimiting the picture medium for the perception can take place more directly. The pictorial order is no longer mediated through individual forms, but rather as the respective to-be-determined relationship of the pictorial means to one another thematically. As a result, the colour no longer appears subordinated to the colouration of a form, but rather is perceived as a particular luminosity which unfolds its effect according to the sequence and quantity of color. The compositional 'hinge shapes' also appear to be structurally applied: via inward interfaces, form and colour boundaries now directly connect with the pictorial boundaries of the image field and the square of the frame. The focus of a possible reversal and reordering of the pictorial representations takes place in the image construction itself.'' (Karin Wendt, Schriften zur Bildenden Kunst, Günter Fruhtrunk Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, Jürgen Meyer zur Capellen (ed.), Frankfurt a.M. 2001, p. 91)