Private Collection, Germany (acquired directly from the artist) / Private Collection, Southern Germany (acquired from the above in 2021)

As early as the 1960s, Gotthard Graubner developed his colour paintings, which he would later call Farbraumkörper (Colour-Space Bodies). Familiar to us today, each unique in its appearance, they were an entirely new phenomenon at the time: a form of painting never seen before, through which Graubner gave colour a life of its own and secured his place in art history. He backed fabrics such as canvas or Perlon with synthetic wadding, lending his pictorial forms an unprecedented depth. Depending on the size of the Farbraumkörper, he worked the paint into the surfaces with brushes, scrubbing brushes or brooms, allowing it to penetrate the body of the work and merge with other colours through successive, varied applications. Heinz Liesbrock put it aptly: “[…] this was always a form of painting in which the artist was the author, yet at the same time surrendered himself entirely to his medium, to the independent life of colour.”
“gong” is a remarkable testament to this concentrated, intense application of colour. Depending on the light, the colours reveal an extraordinary range of nuances and shifting iridescence: a violet so dense that it almost becomes black, yet appears to glow richly in places. Graubner himself emphasised that his colours emerge as the light intensifies and fade away as it recedes. His Farbraumkörper are never static; they never settle into a single, definitively named colour. They remain in constant flux, modulated by light and guided by the artist, much like the resonant sound of a gong. AGT