Adolf Fleischmann - Circle in blue - image-1

Lot 283 R

Adolf Fleischmann - Circle in blue

Auction 1110 - overview Cologne
01.06.2018, 17:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 20.000 € - 30.000 €
Result: 24.800 € (incl. premium)

Adolf Fleischmann

Circle in blue
1965

Oil on canvas 99.5 x 99.5 cm Framed. Signed, titled and dated 'fleischmann circle in blue 1965' verso and inscribed with dimensions. - In excellent condition.

Adolf Fleischmann succeeded in using a minimal number of geometrical visual elements to create infinitely diverse variations. Horizontal lines and surfaces placed alongside one another in a dense and rhythmic, textile-like manner are the characteristic basic elements of his compositions. They interpenetrate and are superimposed on one another in layered pictorial planes, but no diagonal lines are employed to generate a sense of depth. The compositions' increasing density moving from their margins towards the centre produces the pull of an optical vortex. Another essential characteristic is the trace of the painter's hand in the lines and planes, which, in spite of all their perpendicular orientation, endows the lines with a flickering blurred effect.
The painting from 1965 presented here illustrates how important Fleischmann's compositional principles became for the development of Op Art in the 1960s. Even if the artist in no way pursued the intentions of Op Art - namely, deliberately generating an irritation of the sense of vision and thus playing with perceptual illusions - “Circle in blue” nonetheless suggests a distinct optical dynamism through the complex sequencing of light and dark horizontal lines.

Catalogue Raisonné

Wedewer O 404

Provenance

Private collection, Aschaffenburg; Corporate Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia

Exhibitions

Munich 1967 (Galerie Heseler), Adolf Fleischmann; Koblenz 1969 (Galerie Teufel), Parallelausstellung für Konstruktive Kunst: Elemente und Prinzipien in Nürnberg - Vordemberge-Gildewart, C. Buchheister, A. Fleischmann; Tübingen 1969 (Kunstverein), Adolf Fleischmann; Stuttgart 1972 (Galerie Müller), Adolf Fleischmann; Ulm/Münster 1973 (Ulmer Museen/Landesmuseum für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte), Adolf Fleischmann, cat. no. 63 (label on stretcher); Saarbrücken 1987 (Moderne Galerie des Saarland-Museums), Adolf Fleischmann, no cat. no., p. 185, p. 155 with illus. ("Cercle in Blue", label on stretcher)