Jörg Immendorff *

(Bleckede/Elbe 1945–2007 Dusseldorf)
Heuler (Howler), 1983, signed, dated and titled Immendorff 83, oil on canvas, 170 x 75 cm, framed

Provenance:
Galerie Michael Werner, Cologne (label)
Sonnabend Gallery, New York
Private Collection
Sale Sotheby’s, London, February 28, 2008, lot 225
Private Collection, Germany (acquired from the above sale)


Immendorff is rightly recognised as the artist who, in the public consciousness, most consistently and uncompromisingly engaged with public discourse, taking a clear and radical stance time and again. His defiant independence and unwillingness to accommodate expectations resist any form of complacency or compromise.

Today, more than ever, the question arises as to whether his works have secured their significance in German and international painting primarily due to their critical moral authority or through their historical perspective. He himself viewed painting as a means to ‘liberate the future from the past and the past from the future’. As an artist, Immendorff faced considerable challenges in West Germany. His art, shaped from the outset by a strong political consciousness, diverged from the dominant artistic movements of the time and was therefore met with little enthusiasm.

In Heuler, the canvas transforms into an imagined stage for the East-West tensions of the 1980s. A symbolic figure, gripping a glowing torch, forcefully thrusts his bare arm through a block of ice shaped like the emblematic crossed hammer and sickle.

Whether this figure represents the artist himself remains ambiguous. However, through this striking gesture, he seeks to overcome the silence and incomprehension surrounding the political and social catastrophe. Charged with dramatic intensity, Immendorff expresses his profound dismay without descending into sentimentality, while simultaneously revealing contemporary events as a kind of spectacle—an act whose truth lies beyond reality and actuality.

“Something is beautiful if it is honest. If you do an engaged piece of work, which is sincere, the concept of beauty meets the concept of truth. So no illusive harmony.
I try to reach people who strive for truth, for identity.
Although these conceptions are incredibly worn out, one must try to find the
way back to these simple conceptions.”
Heidrun Reshöft, Interview with Jörg Immendorf, in: Bomb Magazine, October 1, 1983