Thanks to his unwavering curiosity and daring experiments, Günther Förg’s multifaceted art resists pigeonholing. Born in Füssen in 1952, the artist’s work includes not only painting but also photography, sculpture, drawing, and public art. During his studies at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, Förg initially devoted himself to painting before moving on to photography in the early 1980s. A step that opened his perspectives and proved extremely fruitful for his future artistic practice.
He showed a particular interest in the modernist architecture of Italian Rationalism. The staircases, edges, and functional forms of this architectural style had a lasting influence on his visual language. Architectural elements are reduced to abstract lines and planes. Before Förg eventually returned to painting on canvas, he also experimented with painted lead plates, known as “Lead Paintings.” Works of this kind allowed him to explore surface and materiality in depth. In 1988, however, he made a conscious decision to return to painting with acrylic on canvas. “Rivoli” is among the first works from this new phase.
In his return to painting, he combined previous experience gained from photography, geometric forms, and his exploration of tactility and texture to create an impressive synthesis. Unlike in Hard-Edge Painting, the use of a broad brush creates lively textures that enliven the monochromatic color fields and lend them a vibrant, dynamic quality. In this sense, our work from 1989 marks a pivotal moment within this development.
The approximately 25 paintings of the “Rivoli” series were created in connection with an exhibition of the same name at Castello di Rivoli near Turin. Our monumental work presents a particularly compelling example that encapsulates the mysterious and ambiguous qualities of Förg’s painting and his unwavering focus on color and composition. On the one hand, Förg embraced the classical form of the panel painting; on the other, he engaged with the works of Barnett Newman. He divided the large-format canvas into two vertical tension fields, contrasting a bold ultramarine blue on the left with a softer, yet equally intense, dark cadmium yellow on the right. Despite the reduced palette, the work radiates a palpable energy through Förg’s vigorous, succinct brushstrokes. The composition is reminiscent of a window or a door: it suggests forms without committing to a concrete reality. Günther Förg, who died in Freiburg im Breisgau in 2013, is known for his extraordinary zest for experimentation and constant evolution—qualities that lend his work an enduring vitality. [AW]