Andy WARHOL

Hartmut Stöcker. Acrylic and colored serigraph on canvas. 1980. ca. 102 x 101,5 cm. Signed and dated on the verso of the folded canvas. Unique. The sitter confronts us with alert, attentive eyes and an open gaze. He is formally dressed, yet appears casual and relaxed. Andy Warhol contrasts light and dark areas of color in clear lines; the dark eyes and hair are enhanced in their effect by an unusually light and delicate blue in the background. In the early 1960s, Andy Warhol began portraying celebrities, mostly from models in magazines and newspapers. Drawing on mass media, developing his own two-dimensional, poster-like painting style, and a color aesthetic drawn from the colorful world of advertising, Andy Warhol put portraiture back on the painting agenda. In November 1979, the Whitney Museum in New York showed the exhibition "Portraits of the 70s". This was the final breakthrough, Warhol was the most sought-after portrait painter of his time and hardly any person of public interest was not painted by him. Requests came from all over the world. Thus it came about that the Munich gallery owner Hartmut Stöcker was portrayed by Warhol in 1980. While the early portraits tell the story of the "American dream" and its tragic protagonists such as Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, or Jackie Kennedy, the later portraits become more personal and tell of Warhol's own biographical entanglements. The path to Stöcker led through his acquaintance with Gunter Sachs, who dedicated Warhol's first solo exhibition in his Hamburg gallery on Milchstraße in 1972. Sachs introduced the two to each other. Hartmut Stöcker was also a gallery owner. Ingvild Goetz had founded the gallery "Art in Progress" in Constance in 1969, and after another stop in Zurich, the two opened rooms in Maximilianstraße in Munich in 1973. With artists such as Jannis Kounellis, Hanne Darboven, and Cy Twombly, the gallery's name was programmatic. The gallery owners began working with Christo and Jeanne Claude as early as 1972 and accompanied the artist couple's first steps on the art market. It was in this context that one of Christo's first wraps was created in Munich, when they wrapped the gallery in Maximilianstraße in 1978. In addition to his work as a gallery owner, Stöcker was also involved as a founding member of the Federal Association of German Galleries. In the group of gallery owners portrayed by Andy Warhol, he finds himself alongside notable representatives such as Leo Castelli or Bruno Bischofberger. After the separation from Ingvild Goetz, Hartmut Stöcker left the gallery scene and "Art in Progress" was continued by Ingvild Goetz until 1984. She became increasingly interested in building up her own collection and so her work as a gallery owner came to an end. We would like to thank Katharina Vossenkuhl, Goetz Collection, for her kind information in cataloguing the work. With a photo expertise from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts dated 7.2.2014 and a photo expertise on provenance from Christie's. Provenance: Estate of Andy Warhol; Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Taxation: differential taxed plus 7% (VAT: Margin Scheme (non EU)).