Lot number 127 - Auction 149
'200 E' (1954)

RUPPRECHT GEIGER 1908 München - 2009 ibid. '200 E' (1954) Egg tempera on canvas. F. 63 x 83,5 cm, 61 x 81 cm. Verso: signed and titled on frame moulding. According to the catalogue raisonné, the painting was also once labelled 'E 201' and 'E 202'. Part. min. rubbed, minimal loss of colour in some places, minimally with craquelure, frame slightly soiled. Frame. Literature: WV 147, with illustration. Provenance: Rhenish Private collection. E 200 from 1954 is an important early work by Rupprecht Geiger that exemplifies his turn to pure colour as a central means of expression. The artist's reduced formal canon, typical of the 1950s, can be seen here in a precisely balanced composition on a bright red, modulated colour field. An almost round, organic form, which is black and outlined in light blue, floats above a nuanced semicircle. Its floating placement undermines any classical perspective. The elementary forms deliberately chosen from an archetypal repertoire do not distract from the actual protagonist of the picture: the colour itself. Geiger formulates his pictorial concern in this creative phase with great clarity: 'In order to be able to analyse colour even better, I transfer the compositional principle of counterpoint to colour and give a primary colour a contrasting colour as an exponent.' (exhib. cat. Berlin 1985, p. 108). In E 200, the black, which is framed by the cool blue, functions as such an 'exponent', intensifying the radiance of the red ground and heightening the painterly tension. The effect always remains subtle without being dramatic. The composition radiates calm, but remains in motion due to the slight shifting of the forms. The work belongs to the group of paintings labelled 'E', whose technique refers to the use of egg tempera - a medium that Geiger favoured between 1942 and 1955. The reduced language of colour and form of this period is directly related to his search for a 'pure' painting in which all representational legibility is eliminated and replaced by visual sensation. It is this clarity and consistency with which Geiger joins the international discussion on colour field painting and abstraction - and is mentioned in the same breath as artists such as Mark Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly and Barnett Newman.