Winfred Gaul

Winfred Gaul was a painter-theorist who throughout his life reflected on painting itself. In his ongoing questioning of the relationship between art and reality, he produced works that diametrically opposed each other and which was often met with incomprehension: Gaul was not interested in a linear development of his oeuvre. Rather, his profound intellectual examination of the possibilities of painting and the international art scene of his time led to some very disruptive changes: While he was declared a pioneer of German Informel in the late 1950s, Gaul deliberately explored the possibilities of Pop Art and color field painting in the early 1960s. His early works being dominated by gestural movement, now give way to strictly composed works with simple geometric forms and monochrome colour surfaces. The use of colour in its independent, reality-producing quality now dominated his work, which set an important intellectual course, especially for the development of painting in Germany.