VALENTINE'S DAY SPECIAL
"RED – 30 works to fall in love with"
"If someone says „Red” (the name of a color) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be different."
Josef Albers
Man, woman or both of them, your pet, your job, a magnificent work of art - it doens't matter who you fall in love with. The only thing really counts is to love. Love makes life worth living and puts a glimmer on everything and everyone around you. Just in time for Valentine's Day we would like to present you 30 works which are definetly worth to be loved. Connected by the color of love and passion a carefully selected group of works by Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Max Ernst, Cornelia Schleime, Karin Kneffel and many more will lead you in seventh heaven and maybe even beyond...
The Color of Love & Passion
Red - the color of love and passion, hate and anger. A color that is associated with sparking contrasts and nuances like hardly any other. It has been associated with a range of feelings and emotions throughout history. Red lips and blushed cheeks stimulate arousal. A red dress attracts attention and captures the imagination. Red roses instead, like these painted ones by Andy Warhol, are given as a symbol of love.
Every Coin has two Faces
Red is the color at the long-wave end of the visible light spectrum. Compared to other colors, it is very light and visible first. This is the reason why it is not only connected with love and passion but also considered a traditional color of warning and danger, but who doesn't love an adventure now and then? No risk no fun!
How to catch Attention
In Renaissance painting, red was used to draw the attention of the viewer; it was often used as the color of the cloak or costume of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or another central figure. In this photograph by Thomas Ruff, the color serves to highlight the woman against the red background, creating a rich contrast.
Ludorff Gallery at Art Cologne 2021 showing Thomas Ruff, Porträt 1985 (N. Ahlers), 1985
The Color of Fire
In 1943 Max Ernst visited Sedona (Arizona) for the first time. The majestic landscapes, the canyons and rock formations, and the culture of the Indian tribes living in the area made a deep impression on him and determined his the surrealist search for a more complex state of consciousness and his relationship with the nature that surrounded him.
The painting shows the characteristic mountain ranges of the Midwest. In the bright red of twilight, the mountains shine and seem like unreal witnesses of a faraway world. Above them, the sky builds up in stripes from yellow to orange to red. The small shining ball of the sun stands above the horizon line of the glowing rocks and seems to prefigure the abstract, colorful works of German artist Rupprecht Geiger.
Of Becoming and Passing Away
"The blooming colors of the flowers and the purity of those colors, I loved them. I loved the flowers in their fate: shooting up, blooming, shining, glowing, delighting, bowing, withering, ending in the pit rejected."
Emil Nolde
Nature, its landscapes and floral splendor is an almost endless source of inspiration for Emil Nolde...
With his studio house in Seebüll, which is surrounded by a magnificent farm garden that the artist created together with his wife Ada, he fulfills himself a big dream. The immense colorfulness of the numerous flowers inspires the artist to his most beautiful watercolors and especially the color of the flowers tempts Nolde to make the color the central means of expression.
More works and their relation to the color red can be found below.
