Norbert Schwontkowski’s strangely intense paintings are built on a stringent use of form. While refusing to reveal the entire tale, the narrative quality of his works anchors them somewhere between melancholy, humour, the absurd and the poetic.
Schwontkowski’s contribution to the GAK’s 2011 annual editions consists of six monotype prints – paper prints of canvas works made by using the excess paint of still-wet original works to create a similar, yet unique new painting. A Matisse-like portrait of a man wearing a hat; a woman with an absurdly large bosom, its form defined by the dynamic flow of the image’s curving lines; an object in a landscape that appears to reference Brancusi’s The Column of the Infinite; a face peering out at the viewer in a work that resembles a drawing by a child; a fragile blossom with an aura of the romantic; a landscape with a tree and a house – in each print the motif references its origins while undergoing a shift in vibrancy and surface texture. These prints are kin to Schwontkowski’s still existing works, and final witnesses to those which have been painted over.
Annual edition 2011
1–6
o.T., 2011
Monotype, oil on paper, framed
approx. 64 x 50 cm (sheet)
6 unique works; sign., dat.
Out of stock