|
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Günter Umberg
o.T., 1984/86 |
 |
|
|
| Günter Umberg, who was born in 1942, has been painting last paintings ever since he was 33. Not that the painter would necessarily call them that, but their extreme attitude gives each of them the property of an end point- something absolute. The works Umberg has created since then are almost exclusively black pictures. They vary somewhat in size and format, but they are rarely far from the ideal square. The artist`s sense of proportion plays a role determining the shape: he cuts the substrate- wood or aluminium sheets- using hand-drawn templates, so that the resulting panels are usually only apporximately right-angled. The surface of the picture is built up, layer, first primed with a resin binder. |
|
|
|
| The artist then brushes on dry pigment- mainly black, but also green or blue tones. The artist sprays that with another layer, onto which more pure pigment is applied. Umberg repeats this procedure more than a hunderd times for each painting, until he achieves an extraordinary lush, deep black tone with a velvety surface that is at once matte and full of a porous vitality. The thickness as well as the faint nuances of the tones and the variable graininess of the surface structure distinguishes one picture from the other, but all of Umberg`s black paintings have an incredibly immediate presence, a physical power which draws us into them and which imbues them with a somewhat transcendent, energyladen aura. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
