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PostWar & Contemporary
3458
JÖRG IMMENDORFF(Bleckede 1945 - 2007 Düsseldorf)
Auf die Plätze. 1981.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated along the upper right
margin: Jörg Immendorff 81, also titled
lower centre: Auf die Plätze.
50 x 40 cm.
Provenance
- Acquired fromGalerie Raymond Bollag,
Zurich, by the present owner in 1990.
- Since then private collection Switzerland.
Exhibition: Zurich 1990, Jörg Immendorff.
Bilder und Arbeiten auf Papier. Galerie
Raymond Bollag, Zurich, 24 April - 20 June
1990 (with the label on the reverse).
„An appeal to the West German and
European artists: Deal in your works with
questions of day-to-day life, injustice,
the question of the threat of war by two
imperialistic states, political repression –
engage yourself for freedom, because if
the first bomb falls, there will be no dry ea-
sel left, Your Jörg Immendorff, May 1978.”
(cit. Dieter Koepplin, in: Jörg Immendorff -
„Café Deutschland“, catalogue: Exhibition
at the Kunstmuseum Basel 1979, p. 10),
At the end of the 1970s, Jörg Immendorff
concentrated all of his work on the topic
of the conflict between East and West.
In 1977, he began painting his cycle of
16 pictures called “Café Deutschland”,
in which he denounced the parting of
Germany, the construction of the wall
in Berlin, the shoot-to-kill order and the
nuclear arms race of the great powers. He
found a fellow-campaigner in A.R. Penck,
who worked across the internal German
border in Dresden, whom he met as an
artist (in the underground) in 1976. Penck
and Immendorff founded a new artist
collective that was to act beyond the inner
German border. They decided “to dedicate
their work to the service of overcoming
the arbitrarily erected border in the form
of the Berlin Wall.” (cit. David Elliot, in:
Jörg Immendorff, Galerie Michael Werner,
Exhibition catalogue 2014). The series of
paintings called “Café Deutschland” there-
by became a sort of theatre scene for the
personalities, developments and historical
occurrences in divided Germany.
The two works of Joseph Beuys’s pupil,
Jörg Immendorff “: Auf die Plätze” (“On
your Mark”) and “Alltag imCafé Ost” (“Day-
to-day Life in East Café”) were created
for this series of paintings. Considered
from the perspective of our time, the-
se paintings seem to be the visions of a
clairvoyant. The painted reunification of
the FRD and GDR seemed to be sheer
utopia at the time. The vehemence and
determination against a divided Germany,
with which Immerdorff paints, is not only
expressed in the choice of the aggressi-
vely political topic, but also in the pictorial
means he uses. He conveys his message
with powerful colours, clearly defined lines
and a summary surface treatment.
In “Auf die Plätze”, a male figure is kneeling
down in the starting position of a sprin-
ter, in front of the steep wall of a fortress,
with a red flag as if he were expecting to
surmount this wall at the sound of the
starting gun. Keeping his gaze firmly fixed
on his target, he is but a few centimetres
away from the top of the wall. Immerdorff
pointedly captures the mood of the time:
the tension, the curbed strength that
transforms high concentration into action.
CHF 8 000 / 12 000
(€ 7 410 / 11 110)