Lot 513 | Winfred Gaul | "I like Fortschritt"

GAUL, WINFRED
Düsseldorf 1928 - 2003

Title: "I like Fortschritt".
Date: 1964.
Technique: Mixed media and adhesive tape on canvas.
Measurement: 136,5 x 135cm.
Notation: Signed, dated and titled verso top: GAUL '64 "I like Fortschritt". Here additionally equipped with directional arrow.

Provenance:
- Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia

Exhibitions:
- Kunstmuseum Mülheim an der Ruhr, 2016
- Kunstmuseum Heidenheim, 2017
- Städtische Galerie Villingen-Schwenningen, 2017

Literature:
- Exhib. cat. I like Fortschritt: German POP reloaded, Kunstmuseum Mülheim an der Ruhr/Kunstmuseum Heidenheim/Städtische Galerie Villingen-Schwenningen, Cologne 2016, p. 32, ill.

The search for new artistic territory and the corresponding stays in Rome and New York led Winfred Gaul to turn away from his informal painting in 1962. His new paintings with collages of advertising and newspaper photos clearly show the influence of American Pop Art artists, but this is soon developed further in favour of his own pictorial language. For around a decade, he created large-format paintings that look like signals or traffic signs. The painting presented here is an early example of this group of works by the artist. A banal motif appears as if through a magnifying glass: the neck of a violet paint tube, from which a green colour mass pours onto a yellow background. Colour combinations such as violet and yellow or green and orange were 'typically trendy' and were soon to be found in fashion, on furniture, wallpaper and even on house facades. While Winfred Gaul's paintings in the following years were dominated by homogeneous areas of colour, this picture still shows an individual brushstroke. Although the areas are already 'circled' in the truest sense of the word, they remain blurred in comparison to later paintings. It is a painting of the transition to later Hard Edge paintings and traffic signs.
In 2016 / 2017, Winfred Gaul's painting will be used as the title for an exhibition tour (with catalogue) through three museums in Germany: 'I like FORTSCHRITT - German Pop Reloaded'.