Paul Thek - Untitled - image-1

Lot 620 D

Paul Thek - Untitled

Auction 1144 - overview Cologne
29.11.2019, 19:00 - Contemporary Art I
Estimate: 30.000 € - 40.000 €
Result: 31.000 € (incl. premium)

Paul Thek

Untitled
1971

Acrylic on drawing paper. 58 x 85 cm. Framed under glass. - Traces of studio and minor traces of age.

In 1969, Paul Thek began his “Newspaper Paintings”, loose series of works in gouache or oil paint on newspaper pages, mostly the International Herald Tribune, and continued these into the 1980s. In the early works from 1969 to 1971, idyllic summery motifs dominate such as “Diver”, views of a lonely swimmer or diver in endless blue, “Island”, island silhouettes on the horizon above a wide expanse of water, or “Red Men by Sea”, a wave breaking on the beach: Thek paints them as a series, whereby the individual motifs become components of visualized sequences of movement or time, and incorporates them partly into his extensive spatial installations. In the “Newspaper Paintings”, the mass medium newspaper, with its serious or banal contents, is superimposed by the often puzzling, exuberantly fantastical motif worlds of the artist. The documentation of the disdainful everyday serves as a foundation for a pastel-coloured dimension which appears timelessly beautiful.
Diverse, esoteric motifs are also found in the early works, such as the dinosaurs, which Thek depicted several times in the soft, chalky blue and pink tones of the early series. The greatest possible contrasts come into conflict here: pastose, colour-intense painting and brittle, fragile newspaper, archaic creatures and human civilization, primeval times millions of years ago, and the present situation, death and life. Thek's examination of the thematic complexes of time and transience which runs through his entire work, takes many forms.

Provenance

Galerie M.E. Thelen, Cologne; private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia

Exhibitions

Cologne 1973 (Galerie M.E. Thelen), Zeichnungen, exhib.cat.no.4, n.pag. with illus.