Sylke von Gaza

Exhibition Sprengel Museum Hannover 2021

“BIG!” with Sylke von Gaza’s Lucifero

The Sprengel Museum Hannover is showing a selection of spectacular large scale works from its own collection.The thematic arc ranges from Color Field Painting and Geometric Abstraction over Expressive Figuration and Photorealism to Landscape Paintings. Many works, including several new acquisitions, are being shown for the first time ever or have not been seen for many years.

The presentation includes more than 30 works by artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Cory Arcangel, Georg Baselitz, Sylke von Gaza, Katharina Grosse, Dieter Froelich, Franz Gertsch, Per Kirkeby, A. R. Penck, Laure Prouvost, Niki de Saint Phalle, Thomas Scheibitz, Rosemarie Trockel and Gerhard Richter.

Virtual Tour: Exhibition "BIG!" at Sprengel Museum Hannover ▸

Of the 30 artists involved, only eight are female. This disparity is no accident, but reveals the fact that male artists are more likely to assert themselves in a bold sweep, while their female counterparts often shun the grand gesture. In recent years, this has changed noticeably and is reflected accordingly in the most recent additions to the Sprengel Collection, which now increasingly focuses on large formats by such female artists as Sylke von Gaza, Katharina Grosse, Charline von Heyl, Florentina Pakosta and Laure Prouvost.

Sylke von Gaza follows the tradition of colour field painting between purely painterly concerns and spiritual fields of meaning. From 2011 to 2020, she lived and worked in Venice, the undisputed capital of colour in the history of painting. There she developed a basic form for her paintings in which parallel broad brushstrokes come together in the centre of the picture to create a horizontal gap, thus creating the impression of a curtain or veil serving as a membrane for a layer behind it. “Lucifero” revolves around the incomparably powerful effect of ultramarine - in the Venetian Renaissance the most precious pigment, extracted from lapis lazuli, brought to Venice from Afghanistan. As the counterpart to the twin painting “Gabriel” in the same format, Lucifero opens up a field of associations between heaven and hell, between the phenomenon of light and the dark abyss, and between sin and purgation.

In passing, the exhibition affords insights into major painting movements in modern and contemporary art, with the spectrum ranging from geometric abstraction and colour field painting to gestural-expressive approaches, pop art and photo-realism to conceptual positions that take the discourse on painting into new media and techniques.

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