Lot 49 D

The phase in Fritz Winter’s work from the early 1960s is defined by an unusual lightness and openness. On a light background we find overlapping, loosely painted passages whose textures distinguish them from one another: some consist of streaks of colour applied with soft and watery paint and others of angular short hatching applied with a dry brush.
From the very beginning, nature was Fritz Winter’s most important source of inspiration. The world at its smallest and largest, elements of the micro- and macrocosm, provide the foundation of his abstract compositions. Over the course of his career, he aspired to nothing less than the revelation and arrangement of universally valid principles. The means of expression he found for this purpose changed over the decades. “One thing is certain: I am like a farmer who ploughs his field anew each year, and the clods keep on falling differently, but the soil remains the same. One thing is sure […], we may be circling round the Earth, but we still haven’t got any closer to the Earth itself,” wrote Winter to his gallerist Günther Franke in the winter of 1967 (cited in: Fritz Winter. Vom Bauhaus zur documenta, exh. cat. Galerie Utermann 2018, p. 28).
The large-format painting “Vor Rot” fascinates us with its scriptural textures, which challenge us to decipher them, and its charged combinations of colours, ranging from earthy-soft nuances to a bold magenta.