Artist | Gudrun Maria Gröting (*1953)
https://www.artist-info.com/artist/Gudrun-Maria-Groeting
Biography
Biography
born in 1953
since 8/1996 Hong Kong
1993 - 96 lived and worked in Shanghai, P. R. of China
1988 - 93 studio in Frankfurt am Main
1981 - 88 lived in the United States, studio in Pelham Manor, New York
since 1985 works as an artist
1984 study at the National Academy School of Fine Art, New York City
1983 study of traditional painting with Sharon Sprung, Brooklyn, New York
Solo Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
1996 German Centre, Shanghai
1992 - 93 Gallery B. Haasner Wiesbaden exhibition room,
1992 Porsche Centre, Frankfurt am Main
1992 Historical town-hall, Maintal-Hochstadt
1990 Gallery Poller, Frankfurt am Main
1988 Art for Offices (PTE) Ltd., Singapore
1987 The Asian Collector Ltd., Hong Kong
1986 Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, NewYork
Group Exhibitions
Group Exhibitions
1989 Pelham Art Center, Pelham, NewYork
1986 Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 7th Annual Fence Art Show, Brooklyn, New York
1985/86 Pandion Gallery, Fishers Island, New York
1984/85/86 BACA Promenade Art Show, Brooklyn, New York
1986/87 International Art Exposition, New York City
1986 General Picture Framing Show, San Francisco
Awards
Awards
I st price at BACA Spring 1985 Promenade Art Show
Memberships
Memberships
Berufsverband Bildender Künstler Frankfurt e.V.
Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main
About the work (english)
About the work (english)
It was in Gudrun's home-cum-studio that I first saw her paintings, hanging almost on every wall available. How these paintings made an immediate impact; they would indeed on every viewer Fernand Léger said, "it makes me happy if a painting of mine dominates a room, if it imposes itself on people," although in private life he was gentle and warmhearted. Gudrun must be a jolly happy artist with her paintings speaking out so uncompromisingly for a side of hers which may be dominating and imposing, whilst most of the time has been eloquently eclipsed by a much more delicate, genial persona sometimes taken as shyness.
The exhibition at Art Beatus Gallery, Hong Kong (1998) showcases the paintings with her two favorite motifs done in the previous couple of years during her stay in China and Hong Kong: pots and bamboo. Simple as they are as "objects", they are developed to such a voluptuous pitch, with such intensity and single-mindedness that the "object" is cast in as more iconic fashion. Much more than still-life, they become indeed a subject in its own right.
It is not the purpose of this text to catalogue their themes and meanings. An interesting point, nonetheless, is that Gudrun would have picked two objects that as a matter of fact do carry certain overt or hidden meanings which could be immediately interpreted and understood by most Chinese people, but are less obvious to non-Chinese. Pots and bowls are the most ordinary and indifferent sort of goods used in everyday life. However, the best collections were used in feasting, ancestral worship and burial rituals as against being simply an utilitarian object. What spurred Gudrun's fascination with these vessels might be some primal allure of form itself. But perhaps unbeknownst even to herself, she goes back a long way and touches a core of aesthetic feeling that is very Chinese.
Gudrun said that the gracefulness that she finds in bamboo goes a bit beyond the form itself. It is perhaps the omnipresence in the Chinese daily life as she sees it and its remarkable resilience and capacity to transform itself in various forms and functions. It is for scaffolding of constructions, for peddling and wheeling and for a whole array of goods and gizmos. Her brushwork assumes almost in an obligatory manner a hard-edged clarity to depict this uncanny strength and proportionality of bamboo that she feels so strongly about. So when I told her that bamboo, whilst a symbol of strength and balance, also carries a fair share of moralistic and romantic connotations in old Chinese literature and poetry, she was quite inspired. Bamboo is indeed an enduring metaphor for moral pureness, personal integrity or spiritual transcendence in quite a few ancient poetry and religious fables. An obvious cultural gap notwithstanding, she opens her mind in such a way that it simply mops up, so to speak, meanings that she might not even know what they mean. The amazement for me with some artists, especially painters, has always been how sometimes this sort of painterly intuition about an object is capable of just "hitting the right note" in the right context - which in Horowitz's words is the last grand price for a pianist. In this case, it is the painter who has it.
The bamboo painting exhibited is one in a series. There must be five of them with identical size, with the same powerful urge to divulge an intensity and vividness of emotions that is almost violent. The composition is articulate and logical, but at the same time restrained and reductive, in such a way whereby a camera focuses on the object in close-ups. The object is brought into a new reality by its isolation, completely divorced from its physical surroundings and associational connotations. The power of isolation is compelling, even where space is conceded to some internal spatial dialogue between component parts, the ambience is darkly confining.
Having seen some of Gudrun's other dark paintings, which she loves to do, I feel that the darkness portrayed in these bamboo paintings is somehow different. Some of her other abstract pieces have similar structural sense of space, (not on display here), but conveys a sort of airy elegance and lightness, in black that is. One sees much stronger colours used in the bamboo pieces but colour is not luminosity. The colours, beautiful in the shade of Chinese red, blue, green cloisonn6 enamel, do not generate so much a sense of light as that of intense, hefty brightness. The visual discipline and sobriety is so conspicuous and cautious that as if she was intimidated, as if there were still too many uncertainties about the subject matter that the only viable way to disclose her feelings through it was to harness it, to contain it. Gudrun must have put on a big fight with the subject itself, and 'in painting she is a remarkable fighter, giving her works remarkable strength.
While her bamboo paintings have an almost compulsive and unforgiving passion to them, the pot series is apparently more malleable and effusive. It is done in such a beguiling way with paint, oil pastel and stencil. Those abstract patterns of rhythmic curlicues and swipes and layers, reminiscent of splashed glazes, or basic pigments on earthenware, or some inlaid metal decoration, share a kindred aura of emotional tenderness and fragility The tenderness is that of a stream flowing in no particular direction, whispering along the way to no particular tune. Gudrun believes that it is the stream of her subconscious thoughts or intuitions,
Somehow the pot is the vessel shape I personally most identify with east-Asian eating, drinking, and above all, burials. Some of the best pots to be found in antique shops were specifically made for burials, while others were the sort of goods used in everyday life and then put into tombs. While without superimposing too much a viewer's experience on a painter's, the series when seen in a collective whole indeed portrays happenings which are not necessarily sequential but somehow form a loop. One sees the parts, the whole, the disintegration and the reconstitution and it is a continuity without a particular beginning or end.
This exhibition picks up a particular stage in Gudrun's art when she, being trained a classicist but a devout abstractionist, turned back to commonplace objects for inspiration. Yet it is not as if she was interested in giving her subjects a sculptural plenitude by walking around them, perceiving them from all sides, or exploring tactile space and form in itself in the service of 'pure' abstract art. She is anchored to visual facts, visual certainties, be they pots, bowls, door frames, window panes, bamboo and so on. From then on, she chose different visual vocabularies to convey whatever sentiments and sensations that happened to capture her imagination at any particular juncture of time, I imagine it would create a beautifully expressive effect placing such dissonance and contrast under the same roof. But as diverse as the painterly rhetoric may look, it is the same intense and tireless painter inside the room.
Text by Ines Nip
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Exhibition History
SUMMARY based on artist-info records. More details and Visualizing Art Networks on demand. Venue types: Gallery / Museum / Non-Profit / Collector |
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Exhibitions in artist-info | 3 (S 3/ G 0) |
Shown Artists - 0 of 0 artists (no. of shows) - all shows - Top 100 |
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Exhibitions by type | 3: 3 / 0 / 0 / 0 | |||||||
Venues by type | 3: 3 / 0 / 0 / 0 | |||||||
Curators | 0 | |||||||
artist-info records | Jan 1990 - Oct 1998 | |||||||
Countries - Top 2 of 2 Germany (2) China (1) |
Cities 3 - Top of 3 Wiesbaden (1) Hong Kong (1) Frankfurt am Main (1) |
Venues (no. of shows )
Top 3 of 3
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Curators (no. of shows)
Top 0 of 0 |
Art Beatus Gallery | S | Sep 1998 - Oct 1998 | Hong Kong - Central | (1) | +0 | |
Galerie B. Haasner | S | Mar 1992 - Mar 1992 | Wiesbaden | (113) | +0 | |
Galerie Poller (Frankfurt a.M.) | S | Jan 1990 - Apr 1990 | Frankfurt am Main | (82) | +0 | |
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