Lot 21 Dα

Droite de suite does not apply to this work.

The materials used are usually noted on the back of the work with a scientific precision characterized by a complexity resembling the protocol of an experimental set-up or assembly instructions. Thus, as is also the case here, the front and reverse sides – together with the frame made by the artist himself – form a total work of art.
Like the gears of a clockwork mechanism, the individual parts interlock and move together to set the machinery in motion. Robert Michel developed this motif while dealing with his experiences as a pilot during World War I, which he survived after being wounded. “Michel is obsessed with the phenomenon of the dynamism to be found within ‘genuine’ machines or motors, which he seeks to translate into abstract rhythms. He also incorporates materials into them which are already concrete in themselves, and these invest his pictures with an unreal substance of reality” (Herta Wescher, in: exh. cat. Galerie Bargera, Cologne 1974, n. pag.). The artist continued with this type of picture in the decades that followed.