Lot 19 | Norbert Bisky | "Alliierter Waschtag"

Coming to terms with one's own biography

‘I grew up with many rules and regulations in the GDR. There were ideas about what was good and bad and what was not allowed to be. That's why I now have such a mania for freedom.’ (Norbert Bisky, in: Die Zeit, 28 January 2011)

The son of the politician Lothar Bisky, who died in 2013, was born in Leipzig in 1970. He grew up in the GDR, experiencing the hopes before the fall of the Wall and the disappointments afterwards. Bisky is familiar with the works of Socialist Realism and Russian painting and critically examines them in his own paintings, with the help of heroic poses and idealised bodies of his subjects.

From 1994 to 1999, he studied at the Berlin University of the Arts under Georg Baselitz. In addition to Baselitz, Bisky cites the old Spanish masters Francisco de Goya, Francisco de Zurbarán and Jusepe de Ribera as sources of inspiration for his art.

People are the focus of his paintings. They are mostly young men who find themselves in sometimes everyday, sometimes mystical scenarios. The neorealist paintings are characterised by an incredible power of colour, which often plays around the protagonists like a wave.

The call of freedom

The painting presented here is an early work by Bisky. The pastel shades are typical of his early work. In the centre of a desert-like environment with a bright blue sky stands a fair-haired youth who resembles an idealised type rather than an individual. Topless, he looks to the right over his shoulder, thus directing the viewer's attention to the group of figures in the background. They all wear the same green jogging suits. The young man also seems to be wearing the trousers of this tracksuit. The suit functions here like a uniform, all four men are connected to each other. The group of figures, frozen in motion, is swinging a pickaxe. Bisky thus takes up one of the most popular motifs of Socialist Realism: the toiling working class. The title of the work, ‘Allied Laundry Day,’ confirms this impression.

The young man has moved away from the workers and is holding a cloth in his hand, which is blowing along the lower half of the picture and seductively swirls around him. The stripes are reminiscent of the stripes of the US flag. The movements of the cloth reinforce this effect. Like Bisky once did in his youth, the young man is experiencing an alienation from the world he knows. Freedom seductively envelops him and is about to take him in.