Jörg Immendorff – Late Paintings
The works of Jörg Immendorff represent a unique contribution to art history: not only have they notably influenced generations of painters but they have also permeated our consciences with their rich visual imagery and multifaceted symbolic universe. Immendorff has been capable of incorporating into his work endless questions on the surrounding reality but also on the discourse of painting and of its very definition.
Throughout his artistic career, Immendorff has used painting as a tool to reflect upon the social and economic state of post-war Germany. Expressionism, New Objectivity, leftist political activism and a strong civil sense influenced by his mentor Joseph Beuys, have merged into his canvases revealing a painted space deeply marked by contemporary history and its struggles. His early works combined a surrealist-permeated symbolism with Neo-Dada protest and ironic outlook, later enriched by the influence of the German movement Neue Wilde and by the artist’s important friendship with Dresden painter A.R. Penck. Immendorff’s great recognition came with the series Cafe Deutschland (1977-1984), sixteen large paintings inspired by Renato Guttuso’s Caffè Greco. These works exemplified his dramatic, dark and sharp expressionism, communicated through packed compositions which denied spatial hierarchy. Until the Nineties his paintings continued to be inhabited by symbols recalling the last fifty years of German history – the wall, the swastika, the flag, etc. – metaphors of the social and political condition of the divided Germany.
This exhibition in Milan represents a challenge as it brings to Italy for the first time Immendorff’s latest works, which he created between 2006 and 2007, the year of his death. These late paintings are masterpieces of great emotional power, conjugating expressionist language with a new and extraordinary formal construction of the image. Since the end of the Nineties, in fact, Immendorff’s approach gradually changed towards a more controlled and rigorous figuration, different from the rebellious and revolutionary mark that had characterised his works until then. A fundamental reason of this change was the precarious health of the artist who, struck by a nervous disease, saw his physical abilities gradually deteriorating. In the last years, he was working mainly with the help of assistants who acted as mediators between his vision and the canvas’ surface, composing the images according to the precise instructions which he provided them. In the works produced in this period Immendorff brought together images from art history, German Renaissance painting, Mannerism, photographs from the media, from metaphorical figures which were combined, intertwined or overlapped. Figures and allegories by artists like Albrecht Dürer, Jacob de Gheyn, Hans Baldung Grien, Francisco Goya became central elements, quotes which Immendorff often manipulated through the use of the computer. Only later the result of these complex alterations and experiments was transferred onto canvas and developed within the final composition.
To the physical limitation caused by his disease the artist responded with a renewed self-awareness and exploration of the world. Through appropriations, quotations, symbols, accumulations, variations, ramifications in constant dialogue between each other, Immendorff faced a new experience of form. His paintings incorporated the process through which they were obtained, thus expressing metaphorically and concretely images in apparent state of metamorphosis. Contrary to his work of the past, what seemed to have disappeared from the canvas was that narrative structure made of different stories or independent moments. The narrative element was substituted by ambiguous images, often directly constructed through the superimposition of distinguished elements - with an approach that united formal to existential research. Also in his late works remains evident a critique to the collectivity balanced by the individual’s desire for change but – if before his vision was influenced by ideology and by his concrete experience of reality – now it appears as the consequence of a inner gaze, that of a man looking at life through a different, renewed consciousness.
text by Sarah Cosulich Canarutto
Throughout his artistic career, Immendorff has used painting as a tool to reflect upon the social and economic state of post-war Germany. Expressionism, New Objectivity, leftist political activism and a strong civil sense influenced by his mentor Joseph Beuys, have merged into his canvases revealing a painted space deeply marked by contemporary history and its struggles. His early works combined a surrealist-permeated symbolism with Neo-Dada protest and ironic outlook, later enriched by the influence of the German movement Neue Wilde and by the artist’s important friendship with Dresden painter A.R. Penck. Immendorff’s great recognition came with the series Cafe Deutschland (1977-1984), sixteen large paintings inspired by Renato Guttuso’s Caffè Greco. These works exemplified his dramatic, dark and sharp expressionism, communicated through packed compositions which denied spatial hierarchy. Until the Nineties his paintings continued to be inhabited by symbols recalling the last fifty years of German history – the wall, the swastika, the flag, etc. – metaphors of the social and political condition of the divided Germany.
This exhibition in Milan represents a challenge as it brings to Italy for the first time Immendorff’s latest works, which he created between 2006 and 2007, the year of his death. These late paintings are masterpieces of great emotional power, conjugating expressionist language with a new and extraordinary formal construction of the image. Since the end of the Nineties, in fact, Immendorff’s approach gradually changed towards a more controlled and rigorous figuration, different from the rebellious and revolutionary mark that had characterised his works until then. A fundamental reason of this change was the precarious health of the artist who, struck by a nervous disease, saw his physical abilities gradually deteriorating. In the last years, he was working mainly with the help of assistants who acted as mediators between his vision and the canvas’ surface, composing the images according to the precise instructions which he provided them. In the works produced in this period Immendorff brought together images from art history, German Renaissance painting, Mannerism, photographs from the media, from metaphorical figures which were combined, intertwined or overlapped. Figures and allegories by artists like Albrecht Dürer, Jacob de Gheyn, Hans Baldung Grien, Francisco Goya became central elements, quotes which Immendorff often manipulated through the use of the computer. Only later the result of these complex alterations and experiments was transferred onto canvas and developed within the final composition.
To the physical limitation caused by his disease the artist responded with a renewed self-awareness and exploration of the world. Through appropriations, quotations, symbols, accumulations, variations, ramifications in constant dialogue between each other, Immendorff faced a new experience of form. His paintings incorporated the process through which they were obtained, thus expressing metaphorically and concretely images in apparent state of metamorphosis. Contrary to his work of the past, what seemed to have disappeared from the canvas was that narrative structure made of different stories or independent moments. The narrative element was substituted by ambiguous images, often directly constructed through the superimposition of distinguished elements - with an approach that united formal to existential research. Also in his late works remains evident a critique to the collectivity balanced by the individual’s desire for change but – if before his vision was influenced by ideology and by his concrete experience of reality – now it appears as the consequence of a inner gaze, that of a man looking at life through a different, renewed consciousness.
text by Sarah Cosulich Canarutto
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