Rupprecht Geiger

371/62, 1962

Rupprecht Geiger, an outstanding German exponent of abstract painting, worked as an architect between 1936 and 1962. He later embarked on a career as a self-taught artist. In the 1950s, Geiger became well-known for his fascination with the color red, which also features as a key theme in his late work. For Geiger, the medium of color is, like fire, water, air, light and earth, one of a group of elements. Geiger is one of Germany’s principal exponents of color field painting – which is characterized by intensive color with a luminosity that radiates beyond the canvas. The glow of the intensive red tones, sometimes combined with the contrasting color tones, casts a spell over the viewer and, if viewed for long enough, creates after-images on the retina. 371/62 shows a sequence of colors that lightens as it ascends: this begins at the picture’s lower edge, with a subdued brownish-red, and concentrates itself into an intensively glowing red in the painting’s upper regions, concluding with an orange-red strip at the painting’s upper edge. “Red: the color of potency. Red is concentrated, and is manifested in the glowing red of the sinking sun.”