Koller View 4/21

6 4 5 FOR FURTHER INFORMATION POSTWAR & CONTEMPORARY Silke Stahlschmidt stahlschmidt@kollerauctions.com ONLINE CATALOGUES www.kollerauctions.com © 2021, ProLitteris, Zurich © 2021, ProLitteris, Zurich ing procedure: Martin marks a starting point on the painting ground, which is then rotated clockwise. Further lines are generated by randomly drawing pairs of numbers. The arbitrary selection of numbers creates the beginning and end coordinates of each number line, determining its length and orientation. In this way, ‘Order’ and ‘Change’ intertwine and be- come a unique artistic creation. The most important actors in Victor Vasarely’s Op Art are the viewers and their visual experiences. With his vibrating pictorial inventions, the artist shifts the boundaries between two- and three-dimensional representation, confuses perception and creates new visual experiences. The nearly square composition ‘Karpat’ (ill. 3), 1984, executed in black, grey and white, suggests dynamics where there are none. Vasarely’s works ultimately cross the dividing line between paint- ing and sculpture. The Canadian Jean Paul Riopelle achieves some- thing similar, but uses completely different means to advance into the third dimension. He qualified his paintings as ‘sculptures in oil’, some of which he com- posed with specially made palette knives. The paint- ing we offer, ‘Noyauttage’ from 1957 (ill. 5), is an ex- cellent example from the series of ‘Large Mosaics’. Riopelle’s painting style here is both controlled and spirited: he applies the impasto oil paints to the can- vas with a knife, and in some places combines painted or dripped colours to formmosaic-like arrangements. These structures seem to push beyond the edge of the picture – which links them to the works of Mark Tobey, who is also represented in the auction with the large-format work on paper ‘Aspects’ from1965 (ill. 4).