ARTISTS
Georg Karl Pfahler
Simon Lee Gallery Hong Kong is proud to present German painter Georg Karl Pfahler鈥檚 first solo exhibition in Asia, coming ahead of a comprehensive survey at the gallery鈥檚 London location in Spring 2022. The exhibition explores work made between 1965 and 1975, in a concise presentation that traces the evolution of Pfahler鈥檚 works from his Tex and Metro series, begun in the early 1960s, to his later Ost-West Transit and Espan series that define Pfahler鈥檚 practice during the 1970s.
Rising to prominence in the early 1960s, Pfahler is internationally recognised as one of the first hard-edge painters in Europe, renowned for his vibrant and colourful works. Born in 1926, he studied at the Kunstakademie Stuttgart under Willi Baumeister, graduating in 1954. Influenced by the tradition of European Art Informel, he quickly adopted an innovative abstract geometric painting style, with block-like forms on crisp backgrounds appearing on his canvasses as early as 1962. Pfahler dedicated his entire career to the investigation of the relationship between colour, shape and space, an objective he steadfastly pursued until his death in 2002.
Highlights include three works from the artist鈥檚 Metro series, in which Pfahler created refined compositions, removing the rectilinear structure of the canvas and re-shaping his own sinuous borders with bands of colour, as seen in Touro VII (1966-1968). The Metro paintings see Pfahler manipulate his medium to construct compositions that have more in common with architecture than traditional painting, engineering space through his devout trust in colour and form. Taking inspiration from close friends Barnett Newman and Josef Albers, Pfahler projected architectural space onto his monumental canvases using pure colour as building blocks, resulting in enthralling spatial explorations of line and colour typified in works like OrbitI (1968).
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Simon Lee Gallery Hong Kong is proud to present German painter Georg Karl Pfahler鈥檚 first solo exhibition in Asia, coming ahead of a comprehensive survey at the gallery鈥檚 London location in Spring 2022. The exhibition explores work made between 1965 and 1975, in a concise presentation that traces the evolution of Pfahler鈥檚 works from his Tex and Metro series, begun in the early 1960s, to his later Ost-West Transit and Espan series that define Pfahler鈥檚 practice during the 1970s.
Rising to prominence in the early 1960s, Pfahler is internationally recognised as one of the first hard-edge painters in Europe, renowned for his vibrant and colourful works. Born in 1926, he studied at the Kunstakademie Stuttgart under Willi Baumeister, graduating in 1954. Influenced by the tradition of European Art Informel, he quickly adopted an innovative abstract geometric painting style, with block-like forms on crisp backgrounds appearing on his canvasses as early as 1962. Pfahler dedicated his entire career to the investigation of the relationship between colour, shape and space, an objective he steadfastly pursued until his death in 2002.
Highlights include three works from the artist鈥檚 Metro series, in which Pfahler created refined compositions, removing the rectilinear structure of the canvas and re-shaping his own sinuous borders with bands of colour, as seen in Touro VII (1966-1968). The Metro paintings see Pfahler manipulate his medium to construct compositions that have more in common with architecture than traditional painting, engineering space through his devout trust in colour and form. Taking inspiration from close friends Barnett Newman and Josef Albers, Pfahler projected architectural space onto his monumental canvases using pure colour as building blocks, resulting in enthralling spatial explorations of line and colour typified in works like OrbitI (1968).
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Georg Karl Pfahler was a painter who created abstract compositions that investigate the relationship between color, shape and space.
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