Lot 610 D

In the course of his long life, Rupprecht Geiger's paintings are subject to a constant process of clarification and streamlining. Starting out with dialectically arranged constellations of shape and colour within complex structures, Geiger then develops colour elements of a polychrome colour system, appearing progressively two-dimensional, that eventually culminate in a type of pure colour field painting featuring an inner stringency and a monumentality bereft of illusion. The colour is the picture and at the same time, the picture is colour! Geiger's paintings tend increasingly towards the absolute, gaining a direct corporeality that expands the series and implementation of works of Marc Rothko or Barnett Newman and that extends the theoretic approach of Ad Reinhard.
Geiger's colour is red. Within this colour is the presence of the painting. This red can be drawn towards violett or turned towards orange, as in Moduliertes Orange. Decisive for a generously applied luminosity with a simultaneaous matt surface is the pigment, the binding agent, the mixing, and lastly the application with the brush on the canvas. Geiger increases the luminous power of colour through his presentation of delicately nuanced gradations that indiscernably or hardly discernably influence our perception and that illuminate the specific pictorial space beyond its borders. In this respect, the modulated orange by Rupprecht Geiger is the result of pure colour in unrefracted luminosity with a highly emotional effect.