Günter Fruhtrunk

Neuer Dreiklang, 1966

Günter Fruhtrunk’s œuvre was shaped by the extremely austere control of color and form he had first discovered in his brief experience of the work of Willi Baumeister, and especially during his time spent working in Fernand Léger’s and Jean Arp’s studios. Fruhtrunk conceived of paintings as non-representational depictions of ‘moved and moving thinking’ that would open up to the viewer a highly active phase of performance in terms of the energy of the colors and of the energy in the very act of seeing. He wanted to make his viewers aware of seeing as a personal time-related experience, independent of rational measurement of time associated with the clock. “The status of pictures is not decided by externals that can be named, but is revealed in the profound excitement of rhythm, measure and sound.” (G.F.) The ‘musical’ entanglement of the complementary colors of red and green in combination with the black caesurae in Neuer Dreiklang [New Triad] retains aspects of Fruhtrunk’s way of working during the 1950s, with forms and dynamic lines relating directly to the pictorial format without reaching beyond it.