1508 - Gerdt Marian Siewert (1920, Berlin – 1992, Hamburg)

Gerdt Marian Siewert (1920, Berlin – 1992, Hamburg) "The Catastrophe, or Last FFF Small-Town Sunday." Original title A surrealist night scene rendered in blue-brown tonal painting, featuring industrial structures, television antennas, and a church tower rising above a blanket of clouds, with a pale blue moon overhead; Siewert worked as a photographer in the GDR and moved to Hamburg in 1960, where he established himself as a freelance painter. His early paintings from the late 1960s reveal the influence of Giorgio de Chirico’s “pittura metafisica” and Magic Realism. Time and again, one encounters nightmarish landscapes and city skylines imbued with an apocalyptic atmosphere. Siewert sought to disrupt the viewer’s visual and cognitive habits and steer them in new directions. Oil on canvas; signed and dated 69 on the reverse. Artist label with title on the reverse. 50 cm x 70 cm. Canvas tear. Framed. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated. Artist label on the reverse. Canvas torn.