(born in Wendorf in 1930)
Feld – Field, 2012/2013, signed, dated, dedicated and with the measurements on the reverse Uecker -12-13 für den Engel, nails, dispersion, graphite on canvas over wood, 100 x 80 x 15 cm

This work is registered in the Uecker Archiv under the number GU.13.001/ GU.84.015/ GU.95.005 and will be noted for inclusion in the forthcoming Uecker Catalogue Raisonné.

Provenance:
Private collection, Germany - directly from the artist

Günther Uecker’s entire oeuvre displays an impressive clarity of form, even in the early pieces, with each work expressing a precise statement. The artist stumbled upon the nail as his key medium as early as the late 1950s and stuck by this material to the present day.
The field is one of Günther Uecker’s central themes, probably as a result of his experiences in agriculture as a young boy. The fields of nails are Günther Uecker’s homage to nature and, at the same time, “art’s unceasing campaign against humanity’s never-ending campaigns against people and against nature.”
M. Ackermann/ G. Uecker, Wirklichkeit der Farbe, Farben der Wirklichkeit, Stuttgart 1992, p. 122

“Actually, when I was a young lad on the farm, I always liked taking the horse-drawn harrow or sowing machine out to the horizon while making sure that the furrows stayed straight.
And I also really liked making the manure heaps in a particularly square shape. I definitely enjoyed that, even though the work was hard. In fact, I don’t come from a city home where I can show myself painting on colour TV, nowadays in any case, but I come from a different world, where you had to put your colour TV flat on the floor, stretching out to the horizon, and that was the image of the world.”
Günther Uecker, Schriften, Gedichte, Projektbeschreibungen,
Reflexionen, St. Gallen 1979, p. 97

Günther Uecker’s nail reliefs directly and genuinely reflect the energetic reality of light and the four elements, along with the kinetic reality of movement. The work’s intensity changes with the light striking the nail reliefs and is affected by the viewer’s position. The relief turns into a concrete image space; it fills the space with its boundaries becoming less and less clearly defined. The structure of the work is rendered independent as a result of the various ways that light can hit the image medium. The real relation between space and the relief is only created by the viewer who, according to Günther Uecker, is supposed to complete the work themselves.
The Field can be seen as metaphorically representing nature, life and the past. The nail structure is densely packed in the upper portion of the work: the nails have been hammered in vertically to give the association of a healthy field of crops blowing in the breeze. As the viewer’s eye moves downwards, the field of nails becomes more sparse, with the nails increasingly pointing downwards. The structure thins out until there are no more nails hammered into the canvas. The impact of the changing nail relief is further heightened by the different ways that light affects it, with the shadows created on the wall by the nails turning the relief into an image object that fills the space.

This work is registered in the Uecker Archiv under the number GU.13.001 and will be noted for inclusion in the forthcoming Uecker Catalogue Raisonné.

Provenance:
Private collection, Germany - directly from the artist

Günther Uecker’s entire oeuvre displays an impressive clarity of form, even in the early pieces, with each work expressing a precise statement. The artist stumbled upon the nail as his key medium as early as the late 1950s and stuck by this material to the present day.
The field is one of Günther Uecker’s central themes, probably as a result of his experiences in agriculture as a young boy. The fields of nails are Günther Uecker’s homage to nature and, at the same time, “art’s unceasing campaign against humanity’s never-ending campaigns against people and against nature.”
M. Ackermann/ G. Uecker, Wirklichkeit der Farbe, Farben der Wirklichkeit, Stuttgart 1992, p. 122

“Actually, when I was a young lad on the farm, I always liked taking the horse-drawn harrow or sowing machine out to the horizon while making sure that the furrows stayed straight.
And I also really liked making the manure heaps in a particularly square shape. I definitely enjoyed that, even though the work was hard. In fact, I don’t come from a city home where I can show myself painting on colour TV, nowadays in any case, but I come from a different world, where you had to put your colour TV flat on the floor, stretching out to the horizon, and that was the image of the world.”
Günther Uecker, Schriften, Gedichte, Projektbeschreibungen,
Reflexionen, St. Gallen 1979, p. 97

Günther Uecker’s nail reliefs directly and genuinely reflect the energetic reality of light and the four elements, along with the kinetic reality of movement. The work’s intensity changes with the light striking the nail reliefs and is affected by the viewer’s position. The relief turns into a concrete image space; it fills the space with its boundaries becoming less and less clearly defined. The structure of the work is rendered independent as a result of the various ways that light can hit the image medium. The real relation between space and the relief is only created by the viewer who, according to Günther Uecker, is supposed to complete the work themselves.
The Field can be seen as metaphorically representing nature, life and the past. The nail structure is densely packed in the upper portion of the work: the nails have been hammered in vertically to give the association of a healthy field of crops blowing in the breeze. As the viewer’s eye moves downwards, the field of nails becomes more sparse, with the nails increasingly pointing downwards. The structure thins out until there are no more nails hammered into the canvas. The impact of the changing nail relief is further heightened by the different ways that light affects it, with the shadows created on the wall by the nails turning the relief into an image object that fills the space.