(Stuttgart 1941 – 1970 Beilstein)
Untitled, 1966, signed, dated Lausen 66, oil on canvas, 75 x 75 cm, artist frame

The work will be included in the supplement of the Catalogue Raisonné prepared by Selima Niggl. We thank Selima Niggl for the scientific advice.

Provenance:
Family ownership, Southern Germany - directly acquired from the artist

Exhibited:
DASMAXIMUM, Traunreut, permanent exhibition, on loan 2019-2021

“Uwe Lausen’s work is some of the strongest in fi gurative painting in Germany in the 1960s.”
Press release: Ende schön, alles schön, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt 2010

Uwe Lausen belongs to a small circle of German painters who were able to translate the changes of their time into painting during the 1960s. His paintings were created at a time when a new generation was rebelling against traditi onal conventions with unprecedented force. The media at the time was increasingly dominated by images of po litically motivated violence, for example the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War. Lausen’s entire oeuvre was created between 1961 and 1969. Characte ristic of his paintings from the mid-1960s onwards is the use of black-and-white or strong colour contrasts and pho tographic motifs, often using photographs by his partner Heide Stolz. At fi rst glance, Lausen’s works are reminiscent of Friedensreich Hundertwasser or Francis Bacon. He also used compositional elements from comicbooks. In the last years of his life (1966 onwards) a more realistic style of painting dominated his work. Lausen analytically depicted his environment, especially the extreme sides of the 1960s.

His works refl ect the social reality of the 1960s using a clear and sharp pictorial language. The present untitled work shows two people sitting opposite each other in con trasting blue and orange. A middle-aged male protagonist sits casually at the back of the picture, his feet stretched out towards the person opposite him, who is seated at the lower edge of the picture, and towards us as viewers. His facial expression seems tense and grim, a large wrinkle of anger appearing on his forehead. His posture and expres sion clearly keep his counterpart, and us as viewers, at a di stance. The smoke coming from his counterpart’s cigarette dominates the orange diagonal in the picture. The second person turns his back to the viewer and cannot be seen up close. The focus of the image is on the protagonist sitting in the background, stretching the soles of his shoes towards us and therefore keeping his distance. The space in which the two fi gures are located is ambiguous and the scene ry seems surreal. The image is psychedelically distorted, refl ecting Lausen’s state of mind changed by intoxicants. The formal shoes, as well as the orange surface of the image, bring to mind an offi ce landscape. The depiction of his social reality is characteristic of Lausen’s work: the omnipresent smoking as well as the heated, mostly politi cal discussions in this period of socio-political upheaval in post-war Germany. Lausen depicts the mood of his time, giving us insights and also criticising its social constraints. His works tell of the role of the individual in the changing social context of the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s.

This piece, which comes from a private collection, was acquired directly from the artist at the time and was only recently discovered and presented to the public. Lausen’s pictures inspire a younger audience as well as his own generation, above all because his pictorial language has lost none of its formal and thematic relevance. Despite his success during his lifetime, the artist was almost forgotten after his early suicide in 1970. At the age of only 29, Lausen took his own life in a drugged stupor in his parents’ house. Today, he is one of the most important re presentatives of German Pop Art.