Lot 43 N

“Colour, like light, is entitled to be classified in the series of elements/ fire water air colour light and earth”, noted Rupprecht Geiger in 1975 (Rupprecht Geiger, in: Ders., Farbe ist Element, Düsseldorf 1975, n.p.), and thus pinpoints for him the essential significance of colour. Colour is the only motif in Geiger's oeuvre; it can reveal its impact in its pure manifestation without having to serve as a vehicle for representation. And furthermore, the artist works deliberately to isolate the colour in order to make it sensually perceptible. In doing so, he often selects colours in their most intense form - red, pink, or orange as supernaturally radiant fluorescent colours of such intensity that they trigger a signal or shock effect, thus engrossing the viewer by means of a physical reaction.
The works created from around 1970 onwards were freed from any individual artistic signature by the use of a spray gun to apply the paint. In circa 1990, however, Geiger returned to manual application, giving the pictorial surface a strong haptic quality. In addition, the monochrome picture surface was modelled by slight graduations of brightness in the paint. The large format “808/89” attains its overwhelming physical presence through the contrast of the brittle, uneven painting surface with the intensely luminous orange pigment. The almost imperceptible transition from dark to light nuances of the same hue creates a subtle movement influenced by the incidence of light.