Winfred Gaul - Visible Poetry, 2017

The exhibition juxtaposes the early works (1958-62) by the Düsseldorf painter Winfred Gaul with the works of the last years of his life (1992-2003). Winfreds Gaul's artistic career began with the Informel group: influenced by his teacher Willi Baumeister, he exhibited together with the group 53 and in Düsseldorf’s Galerie 22. Artists such as Peter Brüning, Emil Schumacher, Gerhard Hoehme, Karl Otto Götz and Bernard Schultze became his companions during this time. From the 1960s onwards, however, he went his own way. He rejected the constraints and the static lingering in a certain style direction. He sought and found new expressions and experimented with forms, colours and materials. In the sixties, he applied strictly geometric forms and signs with a strong, clear color scheme, the so-called traffic signs and signals. In the 1970s his colour-markings followed: musically vibrating paintings. At the same time he developed the multi-part images. In the nineties, Gaul experimented with the so-called recyling-paintings, which arose from the fascination for dealing with a wide range of materials and the effort to create images with little means. Winfred Gaul’s work reflects the development of abstract European painting after 1945 and the striving for a constantly renewed conceptual and creative attitude. (Text: Sabrina von Elten )