GUENTHER UECKER 'KOPF' (1955/1956)

GUENTHER UECKER 1930 Wendorf, Mecklenburg - lives and works in Düsseldorf 'HEAD' (1955/1956) Nails on wood. 60 x 34 x 38 cm. Signed and dated 'Uecker (19)56' on the reverse. Günther Uecker was born on March 13, 1930 in Wendorf, Mecklenburg and grew up on the peninsula of Wustrow. After studying painting in Wismar and at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, he left the GDR in 1953 and eventually came to Düsseldorf in 1955, where he began studying at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf in the class of Otto Pankok. The nail object 'Head' presented here shows one of the earliest nail objects in the work of Günther Uecker. Nails were evenly hammered into the wooden bust of a woman all around, so that the entire figure is nailed. According to Uecker, the wood used came from his home in Mecklenburg, where he traveled back in 1955 to bring his sister Rotraut to join him in the Rhineland. The wooden sculpture was probably made a short time later and bears Uecker's signature and a date 'Uecker (19)56' on the reverse. In its formal language, the wooden figure is in the tradition of Expressionist sculptures. It shows a kinship to the wooden sculptures of Erich Heckel or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who, with their enthusiasm for Oceanic and African art, adapted the powerful intensity of the forms in their works to achieve an increase in expressiveness. Similarly, Uecker's woodcuts produced at this time are close to those of his teacher Otto Pankoks and exemplify his influence. In 1957 Uecker created his first nail objects. The turn to monochrome painting develops as a result of Yves Klein's monochromes, which were first presented in Düsseldorf at the end of May 1957 in Alfred Schmela's gallery. This development is illustrated, for example, by the work "Das Gelbe Bild" from 1957/58 (Honisch WVZ No. 57). In this work, the hammered-in nails still border the stretcher frame; subsequent works from the same year already show the integration of the nail into the picture surface itself. From this point on, there could no longer be any question of a classical painting; his art was transformed into plastic objects. With its material properties and its optical qualities, the commercial nail as a working material lends Günther Uecker's works an object character. The nails hammered into the picture surface thus extend the two-dimensional pictorial space by the third dimension. In the interplay of the incident light on the mostly white painted picture supports, the nail in a multiplicity or also single nail evokes a visual effect. Light and shadow create a visible vibration, characteristic of the art of the ZERO movement. From 1961, with the publication of the third and last issue of the magazine ZERO, which was solemnly advertised in July of that year in the Old Town of Düsseldorf in front of and in the gallery rooms of Alfred Schmelas, the collaboration of Günther Uecker with the Düsseldorf artists Heinz Mack and Otto Piene intensified, who had already initiated the growing artist network ZERO since 1957 with their evening exhibitions and publicized their artistic endeavors with the publication of the eponymous magazine. From the initial nail objects, which are still characterized by a strict, regular structure, to the organic scattering of nail formations that emerge from 1962 on (cf. 'Rose' (1963), lot number 143), Günther Uecker also devotes himself to nailing objects and furniture, such as chairs, tables, TV sets and pianos, from 1963 on. In 1983 Dieter Honisch published a catalog raisonné about Günther Uecker, in which the object 'head' with the number 1 was placed at the beginning of his artistic work. In view of the development in Uecker's works with regard to the use of the nail, a chronologically later overlapping of the wooden sculpture created in 1956 seems possible. In the catalog for the exhibition 'Günther Uecker' in the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover in 1972, the nail object 'Head' is listed with the date 1965 and is depicted among other nail objects from the early 1960s that show a comparable use of the nail (Ausst.-Kat. Hanover 1972, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover 1972, p. 90.).The nail object 'Head' is of impressive museum quality and occupies a special position as one of the earliest nail objects in the work of Günther Uecker. The work comes from a private collection in North Rhine-Westphalia.Literature:Ausst.-Kat. Hanover, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Günther Uecker, 5.5.-18.6.1972, p. 90 (with ill.);Dieter Honisch, 'Uecker', Werkverzeichnis, No. 1, Stuttgart 1983, p. 169 (with ill.).Exhibitions:Wuppertal, Kunst- und Museumsverein, Exotisches und Moderne Kunst, 7.4.-26.5.1968;Hanover, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Günther Uecker,