(Erlbach, Vogtland, 1930–2013 Neuss, North Rhine-Westphalia)
Untitled, 1963, signed, dated Gotth. Graubner 1963, oil on paper, 105 x 78.7 cm, framed

We are grateful to the Estate of Gotthard Graubner for the kind assistance

Provenance:
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia - acquired directly from the artist

“My images act as a mirror for light.
A source of light, a filter, a trampoline for light.”
Gotthard Graubner

“People can experience colour through its nuances,” writes Gotthard Graubner in 1969, reflecting on painting. For him, the exposure value of an emphatically, tangibly embodied colour is of the greatest importance, and not the refraction of actual light on material surfaces.
Beyond representationalism, Graubner adheres to the relationship between background and figure and places floating, abstract, coloured forms in front of monochrome backgrounds. These forms are only set apart from the background by nuances: weightlessness and stillness seem to dominate these works. From the very beginning, Graubner viewed painting as a coloured organism; he shapes it from the material, and adheres to the polarity of cold and warm values in this regard. The space-filling works on paper of the sixties are the forerunners of the subsequent colour-space bodies he made from 1970 onwards.