Helga Philipp

Untitled, 1970

The work of Helga Philipp is among those artistic positions that began in the 1960s and are devoted to extending the territory of fine art into the no-man’s-land between Op Art and concrete and kinetic art. Her drawing, object and installation-related investigations are based on a strategy of systematically reducing the forms used. The silkscreen prints that have been acquired for the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection are representative examples of her serial structural investigations: in the early 1970s, she began creating a silkscreen print series in several installments. She combines a number of different shades of black, white and grey to create individual rings – consisting of an inner and outer ring. Against a quadratic sheet with a monochrome background color, the first ring color consistently increases in strength towards the middle, whilst the second ring color decreases in strength in proportion, thereby creating the impression of a convex bulge in the flat surface of the picture. The prints appear to force their way into real space, and the circles appear to bulge upward toward the viewer.