Raimund Girke: Force Fields

'White is emptiness, immateriality, calm and silence.'

An influential figure of post-war German art, Raimund Girke (1930-2002) studied at the art school in Hanover before moving on to the Düsseldorf Art Academy with ZERO founders Otto Piene and Heinz Mack. Departing from Abstract Expressionism and initially influenced by the gestural-rhythmic abstraction of Art Informel, he became a forerunner of Analytical Painting committed to the investigation of the colour white.

From 1956-7, reducing his palette to black and grey, Girke developed a painting style consisting of few colours and void of any figurative reference taking the work to the extremes of white in 1959. Brushstrokes increased in dynamism and force allowing vibration, rhythm and movement to flow through the materiality of the paint. Exploring the concepts of light, and colour his paintings are at once still and dynamic, meditative and probing.

Since 1971 he was a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 1977 he took part in documenta 6 in Kassel and his works are represented in numerous museums and collections. In 1995-96 four German museums held a retrospective of his work- Sprengel Museum Hanover, Von der Heydt Museum Wuppertal, Saarlandmuseum Saarbrücken, Kunsthalle Nuremberg. This year, MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg, held a retrospective commemorating the 20th anniversary of the artists death.