Lot 65a D

“I feel I am identical with what I do. In my 'Montages' I unreservedly realise everything that is important to me. I believe I am free.”
(Peter Roehr, Notizen aus dem Nachlass, in: Rudi Fuchs, Paul Maenz (et al.), Peter Roehr, exhib.cat., Cologne 1977, p. 31)

When Peter Roehr died after a severe illness at the age of just 24 on 15 August 1968, he left behind a substantial oeuvre that displays an artistic maturity and self-contained quality which are still impressive today. The development of his oeuvre took place within a small number of years: Roehr's first works, created around 1960, were still influenced by Informalism. Yet over the next few years he quickly developed his first collages from everyday materials such as grains of rice and cords which are akin to the artistic understanding of someone like Piero Manzoni or the ZERO Group. From 1964 onwards Roehr eventually started to work on his “Photo Montages”. They are series of images, cut out from magazines and advertising brochures, stuck together closely next to each other and repeating an identical subject. He targeted companies such as VW and Chevrolet, asking them to send him large amounts of images. One theme that became characteristic in his photo montages was the automobile. It turned out to be an ideal way for him to symbolise the basic idea of objects in a series, as it expressed the aesthetics and dynamism of repetition. In “Untitled (FO-48)” Roehr developed a special suction effect through an oblique perspective and the direction of the road where a VW Beetle can be seen on the horizon, racing towards the sun in an endless loop. It shows the special feature of his photo montages, as they are entirely the artist's idea, while at the same time conveying emotions to which the viewer can relate - in our case an almost tangible sense of speed and perhaps also of freedom.