859 - Walter Stöhrer (1937 Stuttgart – Scholderup 2000)

Walter Stöhrer (1937 Stuttgart – Scholderup 2000) “The impatience of objects to be what we fear to do” Mixed media on canvas. 1991. Approx. 200 x 160 cm. Signed and dated in the upper right corner and titled in the upper center, within the composition. Inscribed on the reverse of the canvas and dated, titled, and labeled with dimensions on a label affixed to the stretcher. Brinkmann/Bose 91.2. • Characteristic large format in the artist’s preferred primary colors of blue, yellow, and red • In the artist’s unmistakable, fiercely gestural style • Stöhrer is one of the outstanding German postwar artists beyond the Informel movement Even his later works, such as “The Impatience of Objects to Be What We Fear to Do,” bear Walter Stöhrer’s unmistakable signature style. He paints with a gestural, impassioned style on large canvases, predominantly in the primary colors of blue, yellow, and red, often leaving the white background of the canvas exposed. In this case, an additional dimension is introduced, as the barely legible title of the work becomes an essential compositional element. Stöhrer was influenced early on by the American artists Cy Twombly and Jackson Pollock, as well as by the figurative works of Pierre Alechinsky and Asger Jorn. What makes his eruptive swaths of color—his very honest painting—truly distinctive, however, is that they follow a compelling, unique, and “figurative” path of their own. The expressive, gestural quality and the consistently figurative—which are actually almost impossible to reconcile in post-1945 art—are brought together by Stöhrer with great painterly power. Provenance: Galerie Georg Nothelfer, Berlin; Private collection, Southern Germany. Taxation: subject to margin scheme (VAT: Margin Scheme).