Acrylic on canvas. Signed, dated and inscribed with the work number "2011/1031 L" and the dimensions on the reverse. 180 x 150 cm. [KA]. - Grosse's characteristic rainbow palette glows against light and dark color layers. - The artist defies the boundaries of two-dimensionality and conjures up an immersive sense of space and infinity. - Other works are in renowned collections around the world, including the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, the Istanbul Modern, the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. - The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart will honor Katharina Grosse in the upcoming "Große Landesausstellung 2025" (Grand State Exhibition). The work is registered in the Studio Katharina Grosse, Berlin, under the archive number “2011/1031”. We are grateful for the kind support in cataloging this lot.
Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna (with a label on the reverse of the frame). Private collection (acquired from the above in 2013). Acquired by the present owner from the above
Since she began her artistic career in the late 1980s, Katharina Grosse has pursued to expand the boundaries of the conventional painterly medium with relentless determination. The artist makes no distinction between painting, sculpture, and architecture. Nothing is an obstacle; the world is her canvas. Her in-situ paintings, for which she uses spray guns to apply blasts of vibrant colors directly onto her immediate surroundings, as well as onto found materials and large-format sculptures made of polyurethane, polystyrene, or cast metal, have made Grosse one of the most important and best-known abstract artists in contemporary art. Without a clear goal, she approaches her work as a pure process of artistic discovery. Neither the size of the format nor the variety of colors and the exact relationship between contrast and superimposition on the painting surface are determined in advance. On the contrary, Katharina Grosse focuses on the act of painting itself. She sees painting as a process-oriented technique characterized by flow and resistance, both in a mental and physical sense: "My paintings are 'performances' that condense emotions, intentions and structures" (Katharina Grosse, quoted from: Katharina Grosse. Studio Paintings 1988-2022, Berlin 2022, p. 193). She takes over entire spaces and places through her artistic intervention, transforming them into oversized installations. The present work, "Untitled," from 2011, is a masterful reflection of Katharina Grosse's longstanding practice of in-situ painting. The surface of the canvas gives way to an immersive opening of depth, multidimensionality, and movement. The flooding colors fight over their territory, quickly overlapping and pressing against the sweeping brushstrokes and the dark background. The force with which the rainbow-like, spray-painted stencils are added makes them appear too small for the actual borders of the frame so that they press against the edges as if they could expand into infinity beyond them. While Grosse encourages the viewer to complete the work's cropped geometric boundary mentally, she has created a completely liberated work of art. [KA]
Condition report on request katalogisierung@kettererkunst.de
Lot Details
Acrylic on canvas. Signed, dated and inscribed with the work number "2011/1031 L" and the dimensions on the reverse. 180 x 150 cm. [KA]. - Grosse's characteristic rainbow palette glows against light and dark color layers. - The artist defies the boundaries of two-dimensionality and conjures up an immersive sense of space and infinity. - Other works are in renowned collections around the world, including the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, the Istanbul Modern, the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. - The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart will honor Katharina Grosse in the upcoming "Große Landesausstellung 2025" (Grand State Exhibition). The work is registered in the Studio Katharina Grosse, Berlin, under the archive number “2011/1031”. We are grateful for the kind support in cataloging this lot.
Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna (with a label on the reverse of the frame). Private collection (acquired from the above in 2013). Acquired by the present owner from the above
Since she began her artistic career in the late 1980s, Katharina Grosse has pursued to expand the boundaries of the conventional painterly medium with relentless determination. The artist makes no distinction between painting, sculpture, and architecture. Nothing is an obstacle; the world is her canvas. Her in-situ paintings, for which she uses spray guns to apply blasts of vibrant colors directly onto her immediate surroundings, as well as onto found materials and large-format sculptures made of polyurethane, polystyrene, or cast metal, have made Grosse one of the most important and best-known abstract artists in contemporary art. Without a clear goal, she approaches her work as a pure process of artistic discovery. Neither the size of the format nor the variety of colors and the exact relationship between contrast and superimposition on the painting surface are determined in advance. On the contrary, Katharina Grosse focuses on the act of painting itself. She sees painting as a process-oriented technique characterized by flow and resistance, both in a mental and physical sense: "My paintings are 'performances' that condense emotions, intentions and structures" (Katharina Grosse, quoted from: Katharina Grosse. Studio Paintings 1988-2022, Berlin 2022, p. 193). She takes over entire spaces and places through her artistic intervention, transforming them into oversized installations. The present work, "Untitled," from 2011, is a masterful reflection of Katharina Grosse's longstanding practice of in-situ painting. The surface of the canvas gives way to an immersive opening of depth, multidimensionality, and movement. The flooding colors fight over their territory, quickly overlapping and pressing against the sweeping brushstrokes and the dark background. The force with which the rainbow-like, spray-painted stencils are added makes them appear too small for the actual borders of the frame so that they press against the edges as if they could expand into infinity beyond them. While Grosse encourages the viewer to complete the work's cropped geometric boundary mentally, she has created a completely liberated work of art. [KA]
Condition report on request katalogisierung@kettererkunst.de
Katharina Grosse 
