Lot 74 D

The unusually bright, large-scale painting by the painter Peter Brüning from Dusseldorf pertains to a group of works that initiated the transition to a new stylistic phase.
Having started off with works of completely free, spontaneous gestures, around 1964, he moved on to pictures with content-bound, repeatable symbols from the field of cartography. As is the case with any new style, he also paved the way to this phase with a series of chalk drawings. Even in the comparatively small works on paper, Brüning worked with sweeping, curved and mostly red-yellow arcs, into which he inscribed either small black circles or straight lines in the manner of coordinate systems (Marie-Luise Otten, Peter Brüning, Cologne 1988, p.165). He transferred the shapes, which resemble graphs or marketing curves, to his canvases for the first time in 1964, which he – based on drawings – applied in coloured chalks and oil. He added black, strictly diagonal or horizontal strokes as well as yellow, green, and blue blotches of colour to the curved red and yellow arcs, all integrated into an underlying rectangular scheme. Brüning also reflected on his change of style in 1970 and wrote: “Since 1962 and 1963, the images have increasingly turned into forms that were laid side by side and became individual characters, firstly the space became flatter and secondly the painted forms became more independent. For me, this process then culminated in a restlessness that made me more and more aware of schematic representations, which I consciously included into the painting process, however, always in an unrestricted manner.“ (Quoted from Otten 1988, p.165). Created at the outset of this stylistic new start, the painting on offer here is an extremely significant and attractive picture.