Hannes Grosse
Untitled Abstract II
Color Silkscreen on "Roemerturm"-Buetten, 225gsm
Year: 1978
Size: 27.3 × 19.4 inches (69.4 x 49.4 cm)
Edition: 71 of 160
Signed, numbered and dated by hand
Printer: Hartmut Laube, Serigraphisches Atelier, Munich, Germany
Publisher: Edition Q, Berlin, Germany
Condition: Good vintage condition; deep and vibrant colors throughout. Minor storage, handling defects and creasing. Please refer to listing images.
A color serigraph from Grosse's 1975 portfolio published by edition q, Berlin, this composition unfolds as a sequence of undulating horizontal bands that traverse the sheet in slow, sinusoidal rhythm. Deep slate grey anchors the upper and lower registers while the central passage moves through graduated tones of dusty mauve, blush, and pale cream, each band meeting the next along a crisp, hard-edged contour that never breaks or overlaps. The effect is one of quiet optical modulation: the eye reads the forms alternately as flat color planes and as receding, atmospheric space — precisely the tension Grosse pursues throughout his work.
Hannes Grosse (b. 1932, Berlin) is a German painter and printmaker whose work centers on colour as spatial architecture. Trained at the Munich Academy of Art from 1955 to 1964, he received the Förderpreis für Malerei from the Free State of Bavaria in 1969 and, between 1973 and 1975, designed and executed the wall decorations at the new University of Regensburg. His mature practice is built on bands of unequal width that run vertically, horizontally, and diagonally across the sheet — never overlapping, but curving past darker islands of concentration to generate a continuous sense of spatial contraction and expansion. Where the constructivist tradition used line to divide adjacent fields with finality, Grosse turns it toward transition, binding differently modulated zones of colour and space into a single unified surface. Writing for the Frankfurter Allgemeine, critic Eduard Beaucamp described his pictures as "beautiful monuments that entice us into quietness and meditation." Grosse has held solo exhibitions in Milan, Munich, Berlin, New York, Mexico City, Frankfurt, Zurich, Bad Godesberg, Bremen, Nuremberg, and Regensburg, with group presentations extending to Aquila, New Haven, Karlsruhe, and Essen. His work is documented in Rolf Gunther Dienst's German Art — A New Generation, Juliane Roh's surveys of German art and graphic arts of the 1960s, and Klaus Hoffmann's New Ornamentation. He lives and works in Oberammergau.
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Hannes Grosse, German post-war art, Munich Academy of Art, Oberammergau artist, German abstraction, colour field painting, Förderpreis für Malerei Bavaria, University of Regensburg murals, German art of the 1960s, New Ornamentation, Eduard Beaucamp, contemporary German printmaker, European abstraction, Berlin-born artist, mid-century German art