Page 28 - Studio International - January 1965

Last summer on the Rhine and Ruhr

1 John Anthony Thwaites surveys the recent scene of German art

The Rhenish temperament and the money of the Ruhr, recent painting to a cloudy grisaille with a scribbled'
that is the formula which makes the Western province line. Sometimes he introduces words or letters, some­
the centre of a decentralized Germany. To this one must times he takes dressmakers' patterns to paint on, using
add a certain inborn genius for the plastic arts which or breaking up the maze of lines. Both function as a kind
now and in the past has marked Westphalia. Eight years of prop. They cover up the absence of a statement of
ago, in 1956, there suddenly appeared in Dusseldorf a his own, allowing him the maximum of vagueness and
number of young painters. Nearly all were members of pictorial generality. One has the sensation of the gallery
the Gruppe 53. Almost at a blow they became the new quietly emptying out, until there is nothing there at all.
generation. Nowhere else was there a concentration of Almost the opposite is true of Peter Bruning, whose
this kind. Now in their middle or late thirties, three of retrospective started out in Wuppertal-Barmen, at the
1 these men had their first retrospective show during Municipal Museum. The youngest of the former
Friedrich Meckseper
Magia Horographica. 1964 last summer. Gerhard Hoehme, the eldest and the Gruppe 53, Bruning has become the best-known out­
51 x 71 cm. organizer of the Gruppe 53, has been showing in the side Germany. One can see why. He too belongs quite·
Galerie N1epel Dusseldorf Municipal Art Gallery in Bochum. From first to last, clearly to the informe!, department peinture de geste.
Hoehme represents the informel. With it he made But he has used it, not as a face-saving formula, but
2 his name in Germany. His earlier work is abstract to free himself progressively. As the Parisian critic­
Reinhold Koehler
Thorax No. 5, 1963 pointillisme, the paint laid on in tiny, separated touches. Pierre Restany remarked, some few years ago,.
Sand. 100 x 76 cm. Successful as it was, it always seemed to me both heavy Bruning has the advantage of being nourished by the·
Haus Seel in S,egen and mechanical. As often when Germans borrow a sense-impressions of the countryside: movement of
French mode, all sensuous lightness has disappeared. the trees, water reflections, sounds coming across a,
3 The colour has a muddy quality. 'It looks as though it space. These he has progressively refined in a calli­
Sarah Schumann
Head. 1964 ought to stink,' remarked a visitor. As though he had graphic sense. Around 1960 he had the courage to
Galerie Parmass Wuppertal noticed something of the kind, Hoehme shifts in his accept the influence of Cy Twombly. perhaps the most
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