(Steyr/Upper Austria 1958–2016 Vienna)
“Blaufeldwelten”, on the reverse signed, dated G. Damisch 1996/97 as well as titled and with a sketch, oil on canvas, 150 x 150 cm, framed

Photo with the description, signed by the artist

Provenance:
Private Collection, Italy

Gunter Damisch once said that art had something to do with enjoying life, with “growing into life“. He expressed this “growing into life” and enjoyment of art in various ways: paintings, ceramics, aluminium sculptures, bronze sculptures, drawings, photographs, collages, screen prints. He described his process of working as “primarily inconsistent. Omission and duplication. Camouflage and expression.” He went further, saying: “I am not interested in becoming a specialist in a particular genre. Rather, I want to use various methods to pose questions.” Whenever his painting was described as “literary”, he gently corrected this, saying, no, he was not interested in telling stories. In fact, he was not depicting the world. However, he was a creator of worlds, using his series of colours in tangles and piles, using smears and grazes, using his smudgy, barbed flagellates and matchstick figures to open up the space of the two-dimensional canvas into eternity: into the unknown universe that art has the duty to explore. And he called this Hyazinthsilber Weltflimmerzentrum (Hyacinth-Silver Centre of the Flickering of the World) or Leuchtrotsilberwegnetz (Fluorescent Red and Silver Network of Paths) or Silber Weltlochfeld Liebeskummercollage (Lovesick Collage of the World‘s Perforated Silver Field). He densely populated this universe with living beings with names like Nächtliche Blasensteher (The Standing Bubble of the Night), Flämmler des Flimmerns (The Scorcher of Flickers), Beobachter der Weltenfülle (The Observer of the Abundance of the World), and Stehern (Standing People). He allowed them to float, or even dance, above the fields of his art. On equal footing, without a centre, without a mid-point, filling the image...
Andrea Schurian: Gunter Damisch 1958-2016, Der Standard, 2 May 2016