(Munich 1923–1982)
Untitled (Weisser Hiatus), 1974, signed and dated
Fruhtrunk 1974 on the reverse and with direction arrow, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 120 x 6 cm

Provenance:
Galerie Lahumière, Paris (label on the reverse)
acquired from the above by the present owner in 2006

Literature:
Günter Fruhtrunk, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings
1952 – 1982, p. 409, n° 761 with ill.

“The picture is now free from the more or less well controlled release of personal
feelings into space and time, “according to afore-known rules” (J. Wissmann),
free of passion and trying to make the act of creation readable in retrospect.
It is not idealization, or heroic tension, or the transfiguration of existence and the
interpretation of creation in the immaterial or the heavily gesture-laden material, which becomes perceptible on the canvas, but rather, a free sense of vision is able to unfold and become manifest.”
Günther Fruhtrunk: Not the Language of Formulae, But Intensification, page 23

Günther Fruhtrunk’s unusually rigorous, tightly-packed work has its own place within the numerous approaches to post-1945 abstract geometric art. His paintings often display multiple rhythmic striped structures positioned diagonally, combining elements of concrete art with visual dynamism. The artist taught at the Academy in his home town of Munich from 1967 onwards, and exhibited at the 4th Documenta and 34th Venice Biennale in 1968. After his early death in 1982, he slipped into obscurity for a good while, but in recent years he has been increasingly rediscovered by a younger generation of artists.

Weißer Hiatus (White Hiatus) from 1974 is characteristic of Fruhtrunk’s combinations of shapes and colours. The stripes in alternating colours are angled diagonally, running from the upper left to the lower right corner of the image. By positioning the stripes somewhat off from the diagonal and slightly varying how symmetrical and regularised they are in terms of width, Fruhtrunk creates the appearance of movement. While the precise, opaque colour takes on a grounding, constructive function, the structure of the stripes remains unfinished. The elongated areas appear to be cut off at the edges of the image, with the structure unwilling to accept the format of the image, pushing over the frame. The subtle equilibrium in the image between balanced and dynamic elements plays with the viewer’s expectations. Fruhtrunk skilfully navigates the thin line between composition and structural resolution of form, limitation and boundlessness.