Franz Gertsch - Natascha II - image-1

Lot 623 N

Franz Gertsch - Natascha II

Auction 1111 - overview Cologne
02.06.2018, 14:00 - Contemporary Art II
Estimate: 25.000 € - 30.000 €
Result: 62.000 € (incl. premium)

Franz Gertsch

Natascha II
1986

Colour wood engraving on Japon. 117 x 95 cm. Framed under glass. Signed and numbered. Proof V/4/7 from a total edition of 37. Edition Turske & Turske, Zurich. - Minor traces of age.

'[…] I am striving to depict essences. At the beginning, it was the essence of the human being which I considered to be ideally represented in the portrait of a woman. Later, it became the essence of water, the essence of stone, the essence of butterbur. I am trying to portray this very essence in its “being as it is” at this moment, that is, in the “now”. In my pictures I transport the memory to the now, and then I expand the now within the balance of the depiction... so that the world recovers the reality that I love so much". (Franz Gertsch in: Andrea Firmenich (ed.) Franz Gertsch, Holzschnitte, Aus der Natur gerissen, exhib.cat. Museum Sinclair-Haus, Cologne 2013, p.23).
The work “Natascha II” is one of the first series of wood engravings to be based on photographs of an acquaintance taken by Franz Gertsch. "Natascha" virtually fills out the pictorial space, draws close to the viewer, is even cut off at the upper edge, the gaze directed at the viewer, clear but reposed.
With his wood engravings, whether landscape or portrait, Gertsch creates monochrome colour spaces. According to his own statements, each individual colour has neither a naturalistic nor an atmospheric intention. The selection is beyond any rational control and is rather dependent on a subjective state of mind at a specific point in time. The paints consist of pure pigment powder, which Franz Gertsch obtains from Kyoto or from the Allgäu, and which he mixes with an oil binder. The artist creates his wood engravings on long-cut timber and uses pear wood for the Natascha I-V series. The engravings are mostly printed on Japanese vellum.
Franz Gertsch reproduces his portraits of women in the wood engravings as realistically and accurately as possible, without idealising, without emphasising specific personal details or striking features in the facial expressions. In contrast to his lifelike, monumental, painted portraits, with the help of the wood engraving and the monochrome colouring, the portraits are removed from reality and thus reduced to the essence of the person portrayed.

Catalogue Raisonné

Mason 5 b V

Provenance

Turske & Turske Zurich (label verso); private collection, Switzerland