Lot 18 | Hermann Glöckner | Kleine rot-weiße Faltung auf Schwarz

GLÖCKNER, HERMANN
1889 Dresden - 1987 Berlin

Title: Kleine rot-weiße Faltung auf Schwarz.
Subtitle: Doppelseitig bearbeitete Tafel.
Date: 1933.
Technique: Folded Japan paper and laquer on black primed card. Verso laquer and India ink on white primer.
Measurement: 35 x 25cm.
Notation: Illegibly inscribed lower right: 154/7c. Inscribed verso: FH (ligated) G 33.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed. Not examined out of the frame.

Provenance:
- Private collection Düsseldorf
- Private collection North Germany

Exhibitions:
- Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden 1969, no. 144

Literature:
- Dittrich, Christian/Mayer, Rudolf/Schmidt, Werner: Hermann Glöckner - Die Tafeln 1919-1985, Dresden/Stuttgart 1992, cat. rais. no. 59.
- Schmidt, Werner: Hermann Glöckner zum 80. Geburtstag. Zeichnungen, Gemälde und Tafeln aus den Jahren 1911-1945. Kupferstich-Kabinett der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden 1969, no. 144
- Thomaschke, Ivana: Werkverzeichnis der Tafeln Hermann Glöckners bis 1945, according to information by H. Glöckner started in 1966, supplemented in 1978, no. 47
- Hermann Glöckner, list of plates 1969, with negative numbers (100-154), short description and measurements, Dresden, estate (handwritten), no. 12

- Solitaire of outstanding quality
- Impressive work with strong spatial presence
- Works by the artist from the so-called Tafelwerk are only very rarely offered on the auction market

The Dresden painter, graphic artist and sculptor Hermann Glöckner is a co-founder of Constructivism in Germany. Far away from the art market, he worked in seclusion and, starting in 1930, created a unique oeuvre with his "Tafeln" ("Panels"), in which he devoted himself unflinchingly to the fundamental questions of line, surface, color and space by means of strictly geometric structures. Here, folds become the defining maxim of his art. With them he explores the boundaries of painting and transcends them.

For the light surface reliefs worked on both sides, Glöckner uses cardboard hardened by soaking in glue water and folded, translucent papers, and sometimes other materials as well. He applies the colors using stencils. He then lays the papers on the still partially wet paint surface and, if necessary, carves lines into them. Without his intervention, the colors now partially penetrate the paper and more or less accumulate in the depths. Finally, Glöckner covers the entire panel with a sealing layer of varnish. With these few means of design, he brings the peculiarities of the papers and other materials as well as the quality of the colors particularly to the visualization.

It is important to Glöckner that his "Tafelwerke" - this designation was not chosen by him, but by art scholars - be understood as objects to be encountered. So we are invited to touch them, to turn and twist them. And it is not only permitted, but required, to hang them freely in the room, because in the movement their peculiarities become even more obvious.

This is also true of the beautiful "Small Red and White Fold on Black." It is one of about 60 simple but labor-intensive panels that the artist made in a first intensive study of the technique. As in our example, these early foldings already indicate Glöckner's turn toward three-dimensional spatiality: While the overlays still remain attached to spatiality in the two-dimensional, the cardboard, completely saturated with color, is itself already a three-dimensional (color) object. In this way, Glöckner begins his "exit" from the picture. In this way he anticipates tendencies in his art of the 1960s and 1970s.