Winfred Gaul

Winfred Gaul (born July 9, 1928 in Düsseldorf ; † December 3, 2003 in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth ; actually Winfried Gaul ) was a German artist of Informel and analytical painting .

Life

Born in Düsseldorf, Gaul spent his childhood and youth there from 1931 to 1944 because his father was transferred to East Prussia as a teacher. In 1944, shortly before the end of the war, at the age of 16, he was drafted as a soldier on the Eastern Front.

After graduating from high school in Düsseldorf in 1948, Gaul began an apprenticeship as a sculptor. From 1949 to 1950 he studied art history and German at the University of Cologne. From 1950 to 1953 he studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart with Willi Baumeister and Manfred Henninger . A stay in Paris followed, during which he met the German émigré and gallery owner Jean-Pierre Wilhelm and the art critic Pierre Restany . A key experience for him was the encounter with works by William Turner in the Tate Gallery in London in the early days of his painting.

In 1955 he set up his studio in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth and joined Gruppe 53 , a group of Informel artists , with whom he exhibited at home and abroad. In 1961 he lived and worked in Rome for several months, followed by a four-month stay in New York in 1962 at the invitation of the art critic Clement Greenberg . Between 1956 and 1985 Winfred Gaul took part in a total of sixteen annual DKB exhibitions as a member of the German Association of Artists . In 1958 he received the Prize of the Kulturkreis in the Federal Association of German Industry and in 1964 the Villa Romana Prize for Painting. In 1964/65 he taught at the Bremen State Art School and in 1965/66 as a visiting lecturer at the Bath Academy and the Regional College of Arts in Hull. In 1984 the Minister for Science and Research of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia appointed him Professor hc. In 1994 he was awarded the Lovis Corinth Prize .

Gaul was married to the artist Annah (di Barbara Gaul) and lived with her in Liguria , Antwerp and Kaiserswerth. He is buried in the cemetery in Düsseldorf-Kalkum.

plant

Thanks to Gaul's “lifelong experimentation with the means of form and color”, several phases can be distinguished in his work. The scriptural "Poèmes Visibles" (painted poems) and "Color manuscripts" (1956-60) were already created in the phase of his early informal work (1955–59). This was followed by the phase of "wipe images" and "white images" (1959–61). From 1963 he created the striking “Signals & Traffic Signs ” as well as his Hard Edge works, before he turned to “analytical painting” in the 1970s with the group of works “Markings” and again later to the “Recycling” series (from 1981). Multi-part pictures (dyptiches and tryptiches) as well as pictures “without right angles” were also part of his repertoire.

Gaul occupied himself with his traffic signs and signal images for a whole decade. The elementary forms - circle, triangle, square - also allowed him a multicolor, which the smeared images excluded. They also led Gaul to temporarily turn away from the rectangular panel painting, to the group of works called "shaped canvas". "Despite a confirmation by the later pop artifacts, Gaul's signals are not, as in pop, quotes from reality, but invented, synthetically produced artificial structures." The fact that some of his works from this series were shown in a recent exhibition at the Schirn in Frankfurt under the heading German Pop is probably based on a misunderstanding. After all, Gaul understood this group of works quite differently: “While Pop Art and Happening are content with imitating reality, mirroring real situations and thereby disappointing consumer society through their conformist glorification, I venture into the art-empty landscapes of the big cities. My traffic signs are the hieroglyphs of a new urban art. They usurp the banality of the jargon of their role models in order to form a new language with a new, fresh and unused beauty. ”In a manifesto from 1963 published with Hans Peter Alvermann , it is said that their“ QUIBBKunst […] is not a German version of Pop Art "is. Nevertheless, Gaul is repeatedly counted among the German Pop Art artists, most recently in 2016 in the Stuttgart exhibition of the Schlichtenmaier Gallery: Winfred Gaul. Pop Art works .

His first major solo exhibition took place in 1957 in the Düsseldorf Gallery 22, which specializes in Informel and is run by Jean-Pierre Wilhelm and Manfred de la Motte . The first museum purchase also took place in 1957. The Kunsthalle Mannheim bought Gaul's painting “Splendor of Destruction” from the exhibition “A New Direction in Painting” curated by it.

Numerous solo and group exhibitions followed in galleries and museums in Germany and abroad. Of these, documenta II in 1959 and documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977 , where Gaul was represented in 1959 with three informal pictures and in 1977 with works from the “Color Markings” series.

The Museum am Ostwall , Dortmund, held two years after his death, from 3 July to 2 October 2005, a major retrospective of his works from 1958 to 2003. In the large representative exhibition grand Le geste! Informal and abstract expressionism 1946-1964 , which the Museum Kunstpalast (in the spelling at the time: museum kunst palast ) presented in Düsseldorf in 2010, Gaul was represented with several informal pictures.

Many of his publications and exhibition catalogs contain notes and notes on artistic experience and self-reflection, which, in addition to painting, reveal Gaul's literary talent. Art historians such as Karl Ruhrberg and Beat Wismer have described him as a pictor doctus (learned painter) .

“The beginnings of Informel were dominated by revolt and anarchy. We rebelled against the attempt to reestablish the old order that had proven incapable of protecting humanity against the Brown Terror. As painters, we protested in the language of painting: against the composition, against the drawing, against the figure, against the image, against the familiar and traditional. "

- Winfred Gaul : 1987, Picasso and the Beatles, p. 76.

"Painting is the painter's reflection on the possibility of painting."

- Winfred Gaul : 1987, Picasso and the Beatles, p. 180.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

• 1956: Galerie Gurlitt, Munich (1st solo exhibition)
• 1957: Galerie 22, Düsseldorf
• 1962: Galeria L'Attico, Rome (catalog)
• 1962: Robert Elkon Gallery, New York
• 1963: Galerie Müller, Stuttgart: traffic signs and signals (catalog)
• 1964: Municipal Museum Wiesbaden: traffic signs and signals
• 1966: Institute of Contemporary Arts , London: Traffic Signs and Signals
• 1966: Municipal Art Gallery Mannheim
• 1967: Galerie Räber, Lucerne (catalog)
• 1967: Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum , Hagen (catalog)
• 1967: Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels: Gaul - Signaux - Signals (catalog)
• 1968: Center for Contemporary Art , Aachen: Two-way traffic (catalog)
• 1970: Overbeck-Gesellschaft , Lübeck: Constructions - Signs - Signals (catalog)
• 1972: Städtische Galerie Nordhorn : Images and signals in the streets of Nordhorn (catalog)
• 1973: Westfälischer Kunstverein , Münster / Municipal art collections, Ludwigshafen / Museum Ulm / Kunsthalle Bielefeld : Winfred Gaul - 20 years of painting (retrospective 1953-1973) (catalog)
• 1975: Lehmbruck Museum , Duisburg: painting 1959-61 / 1974-1975 (catalog)
• 1979: Kunstverein Heidelberg: Complete prints (catalog)
• 1982 Pinacoteca von Macerata: retrospective of hand drawings (1955–1982) (catalog)
• 1987 Galleria Peccolo, Livorno: Winfred Gaul or the beginning of analytical painting. Works from the years 1953-1961 (catalog)
• 1988/89: Museum Morsbroich , Leverkusen / Städtische Galerie Lüdenscheid / Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen / Oldenburger Kunstverein / Kunsthalle Kiel / Ulmer Museum, Ulm: Works on paper 1955-1987 (catalog)
• 1997: Märkisches Museum, Bremen / Städtische Galerie, Witten: Winfred Gaul - Das Frühwerk 1953-1961 (catalog)
• 1998: Von der Heydt-Museum , Wuppertal: Without right angles (catalog)
• 2001: Museum am Ostwall , Dortmund: Paintings from the 1950s
• 2012: Galerie Schlichtenmaier, Stuttgart: Early Works: Informel and Signals (catalog)
• 2013: Galerie Michael Hasenclever, Munich: Markings 1971/78
• 2013: Galleria Peccolo, Livorno / Galleria Anna D'Ascanio, Rome: Winfred Gaul: due anni a Roma - opere 1959-1962 (catalog)
• 2014: Museum Kunstpalast , Düsseldorf: Winfred Gaul. Paintings, prints, illustrated books from the Kemp Collection (catalog)
• 2015: Galerie Michael Hasenclever, Munich: Right and left of 0
• 2016: Galerie Schlichtenmaier, Stuttgart: Works of Pop Art (catalog)
• 2017: Galerie Franz Swetec, Düsseldorf: Winfred Gaul
• 2018: Galerie Schlichtenmaier, Stuttgart: Winfred Gaul on his 90th birthday. Painting as an open system
• 2018: elten & elten gallery Zurich: Winfred Gaul - painting
• 2018/19: Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf: Winfred Gaul on the 90th (catalog)

Group exhibitions (selection)

• 1955: Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart : Young artists exhibit (catalog)
• 1956: Städtische Kunsthalle , Düsseldorf: Group 53 (catalog)
• 1956: Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum , Aachen: Exhibition Community of Young European Artists
• 1957: Galerie 22, Düsseldorf: Schultze , Götz , Dahmen , Gaul, Jenkins, Hoehme, Schumacher, Kreutz
• 1957: Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim: A new direction in painting (catalog)
• 1958: Kunsthalle Recklinghausen  : 10 years of "Young West" (catalog)
• 1959: Institute of Contemporary Arts , London: Present Day German Paintings (catalog)
• 1970: Museum Oud-Hospitaal Aalst Belgiën: Art and Idea , curator Roger D'Hondt (poster)
• 1996: Städtische Galerie Bremen : Dawn of a scene, 1963–1967 (catalog)
• 1996: Kunsthalle Recklinghausen: Art of the West. German Art 1945–1960 (catalog)
• 1997: Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund: Art of Informel (catalog)
• 1998: Museum Schloß Morsbroich , Leberkusen: The informals from Pollock to Schumacher (catalog)
• 2000: Study gallery Busse, Worpswede: German art of the last fifty years
• 2003: Museum Ratingen : Group 53 (catalog)
• 2014: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt : German POP (catalog)
• 2015–2016: Gallery Setareh, Düsseldorf: Constructive Color
• 2017: Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf: Cutting Edge - Josef Albers, Winfred Gaul, Imi Knoebel

Writings, exhibition catalogs, catalog raisonné

• Rolf Lauter : Winfred Gaul ol'inizio della Pittura Analitica. Opere degli anni 1953-1961 / Winfred Gaul or the beginning of analytical painting; Works from the years 1953-1961 and interview with Winfred Gaul in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth on July 19, 1986 / Intervista con Winfred Gaul a Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth July 19 , 1986 , Galleria Peccolo, Livorno 1987.
• Winfred Gaul: Picasso and the Beatles . Published by Quensen, Lamspringe 1987.
• Winfred Gaul: Notes and Pictures . Eremiten-Presse, Düsseldorf 1989.
• Winfred Gaul: Painting is a jealous lover . Eremiten-Presse, Düsseldorf 1992.
• Winfred Gaul: The early work . DruckVerlag Kettler, Bönen / Westphalia 1997.
• Winfred Gaul: Without right angles. Painting 1964–1989 . From the Heydt Museum, Wuppertal 1998.
• Winfred Gaul: Recycling 1981-1997 . DruckVerlag Kettler, Bönen / Westphalia 1999.
• Winfred Gaul: Alone in the studio at night. Painting on paper. 50 works. With notes from the artist . Radius-Verlag, Stuttgart 2001.
• Planned painting (exhibition catalog). Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster 1974.
• Siegfried Gnichwitz (Ed.): Winfred Gaul. On the way to the picture . Fragments, sketches, experiments. Kettler Kunst, Bönen / Westphalia 2003.
• Angela Madesari: Winfred Gaul. The line . Exhibition catalog of the Galleria Bianconi, Milano 2011.
• Manfred de la Motte (Ed.): Winfred Gaul. Work 1953–1961 . Hennemann Gallery, Bonn 1979.
• Kurt Wettengl (Ed.): Winfred Gaul. Think in pictures. Painting from 1958 to 2003 . With contributions by Lothar Romain and Jürgen Weichardt . Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund 2005.
• Lothar Romain : Winfred Gaul. Catalog raisonné Volume I: 1949–61, Volume II: 1962–83 . Düsseldorf 1991 and 1993.
• Galerie Schlichtenmaier: Winfred Gaul: Early work: Informal and signals . Edition Schlichtenmaier, Grafenau 2012.

Literature on horse

• Nicola Carola Heuwinkel: Painting without borders. Art Informel in Germany . Kehrer, Heidelberg-Berlin 2010 (including chapter on W. Gaul: Tension Between Line and Color , pp. 194–204, as well as numerous illustrations).
• Lothar Romain: Winfred Gaul. The painter . Hirmer Verlag, Munich 1999.
• Walter Vitt; Talking about art. Art, Artist and Art Mediator. Speeches from over two decades . Steinmeier, Deiningen 2010 (therein chapter on W. Gaul: Winfred Gaul - Nordhorn 1972 , pp. 416-420).
• Enrico Crispolti, Rolf Lauter, Roberto Peccolo, Winfred Gaul: Due anni a Roma 1959-1962, Galleria Peccolo 2013. [1]
• Willi Kemp: Gaul, Winfred . in: Ders .: In dialogue with art - conversations with artists. Notes on art. Correspondence . Volume I. Kettler printing works, Böhnen / Westphalia 2019, pp. 224–243.
• Thomas Hirsch: Gaul, Winfred . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 50, Saur, Munich a. a. 2006, ISBN 3-598-22790-6 , pp. 232-234.

Remarks

1. ↑ Winfred Gaul: Picasso and the Beatles. Verlag bei Quensen, Lamspringe 1987, pp. 42-46.
2. ↑ Nicola Carola Heuwinkel: Unlimited painting. Art Informel in Germany . Kehrer, Heidelberg-Berlin 2010, p. 195.
3. ↑ Winfred Gaul: Picasso and the Beatles. Verlag bei Quensen, Lamspringe 1987, pp. 59 and 247.
4. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Exhibitions since 1951 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on January 11, 2016)  
5. ↑ Jürgen Weichard: Painting in Several Phases . In: Encounter with Winfred Gaul . Catalog raisonné by the artist from the Ingrid and Willi Kemp collection. Düsseldorf 1989, p. 16.
6. ↑ See Winfred Gaul: Poème Visibles, Poèmes Découpèes, color manuscripts . In: Ders .: Picasso and the Beatles . Verlag bei Quensen, Lamspringe 1987, pp. 215f. / Walter Israel: Scripture as an image structure. Gaul's intellectual pleasure in the writing gesture . In: Winfred Gaul: The early work . DruckVerlag Kettler, Bönen / Westphalia 1997, pp. 21–42.
7. ↑ See also Angela Madesari: Winfred Gaul. The line . Exhibition catalog of the Galleria Bianconi, Milano 2011.
8. ↑ Jürgen Weichard: Dyptiches and Tryptiches in the work of Winfred Gaul . In: Exhibition catalog painting in 2.3. n. phases . Galerie Schüppenhauer, Cologne 1988, pp. 3–8.
9. ^ Exhibition catalog: Winfred Gaul: Without right angles. Painting 1964-1989 . Ed. by Sabine Fehlemann, Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, September 6 to October 18, 1998.
10. ^ Lothar Romain: Winfred Gaul. The painter. Hirmer Verlag, Munich 1999, p. 61.
11. ^ Lothar Romain: Winfred Gaul. The painter. Hirmer Verlag, Munich 1999, p. 62.
12. ↑ Winfred Gaul: shaped canvas - legend and reality. In the S.; Picasso and the Beatles. Eremitenpresse, Düsseldorf 1987, pp. 176-178.
13. ↑ Quoted from a catalog after Lothar Romain: Winfred Gaul. The painter. Hirmer Verlag, Munich 1999, p. 64.
14. ↑ Quoted from Heinz Ohff: Pop and the Consequences or Finding Art on the Street. Visualized by Wolf Vostell. Droste, Düsseldorf 1969 (2nd edition), p. 138 f.
15. ^ HP Alvermann; Winfred Gaul: First QUIBB Manifesto. from January 30, 1963. In: Winfred Gaul: Picasso and the Beatles. Eremitenpresse, Düsseldorf 1987, p. 123.
16. ↑ Exhibition catalog: Winfred Gaul. Think in pictures. Painting from 1958 to 2003 . Ed. by Kurt Wettengl with contributions by Lothar Romain and Jürgen Weichardt. Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund 2005.
17. ↑ Exhibition catalog: Le grand geste! Informal and Abstract Expressionism 1946-1964 . museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf, April 10 to August 1, 2010.
18. ^ Karl Ruhrberg: Foreword to Picasso and the Beatles , p. 11.
19. ↑ Beat Wismer: “I didn't become an artist to bore myself or others”. The challenge of Winfred Gaul . In: Catalog for the exhibition Winfred Gaul at the 90th Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf 2018, p. 15.

Web links

• Exhibition in the Villa Wessel in Iserlohn April 27, 2001 - July 1 , 2001 on villa-wessel.de
• Literature by and about Winfred Gaul in the catalog of the German National Library
• Winfred Gaul on kunstaspekte.de
• Entry at the elten & elten gallery, Zurich
• Materials by and about Winfred Gaul in the documenta archive
• Literature by and about Winfred Gaul [2]