Munich: Galerie Vogdt shows art that makes you happy

Created: 08/05/2022 09:31

By: Katja Kraft

Gallery owner Stefan Vogdt and art historian Sonja Lechner.

Here with "Lobelia" by Arne Quinze.

© Marcus sleep

Rosemarie Trockel, Rotraut, Tony Cragg, Arne Quinze: The Munich gallery Vogdt offers in the new show "everything is sculpture" highly traded sculptures and photographic art.

The two firecrackers are on the right and left.

Bright red, bright blue - figures that just seem to have whirled around.

An intoxicating moment, captured in aluminium, coated in car paint.

The full life.

Doesn't anyone believe that the artist behind these sculptures, which are now being offered at the Vogdt Gallery in Munich, is already 83 years old.

And then again.

Because in the past eight decades, this woman has got to know the dance of life in all styles.

With all the unforeseen meter changes, the limbo fun, the surging waltz moments and those moments where it hurts because fate steps on your toes and lets you land hard on the smooth parquet floor.

Then get up again and again, that's artist Rotraut's motto.

Born in 1938, sister of Günther Uecker,

married to Yves Klein (1928-1962).

The year of their marriage is the year of their death.

A few months after the wedding, Rotraut, who was very pregnant at the time, became a widow.

And lost partners and children's father.

Tony Cragg's "Seeds Red" with Rotraut's "Music Note" in the background.

© sleep

The artistic process can also be a means of overcoming pain.

This is not the only reason why Rotraut's work impresses.

"She managed to position herself in the environment of two supermen of art history, to follow her artistic path," says the Munich art historian Sonja Lechner.

She opened the vernissage.

And also addressed the “two crackers” in blue and red, which gallery owner Stefan Vogdt loves for their youthfulness.

"They come off so young, so light and springy."

Rotraut: Action painting à la Jackson Pollock

In fact, you can feel the verve with which Rotraut splashed paint onto a canvas in an action painting à la Jackson Pollock.

She selected some of the figures that emerged on the screen and molded them out of aluminum.

The two in the Galerie am Münchner Hofgarten are the last available on the market.

Price: 39,000 euros (blue) and 63,000 euros (red).

The motto of the exhibition is "everything is sculpture", but works such as the filigree glass work by Tony Cragg (69,000 euros), the surfboard by Rosemarie Trockel (45,000 euros) or Arne Quinze's color explosion (125,000 euros) are surrounded by subtle ones photographs.

Yamamoto Masao, one of Japan's best-known photo artists, has been running the gallery for years.

His picturesque view of the world fascinates.

He succeeds in bringing things, moments, animals and people into focus that we would otherwise pass by unnoticed.

Like the boy by the water who, lost in play, makes waves.

Or the cloud that hovers dreamily over two trees.

Like she's about to disappear.

Air and water captured for eternity.

Impressed, one wonders how a person can have such a sense for the right moment.

Like the world is just waiting for someone to stage their cutie marks.

Although Masao himself would never speak of staging.

He sees himself as an "observer of life". And it is affordable for first-time collectors: the works on display start at around 1000 euros.

Olivia Musgrave's "Turning for Home" (2015), gallery price: 49,500 euros.

The Irish sculptor is known for her witty sculptures featuring strong women.

© sleep

Not a sculpture either, but a picture with sculptural motifs is the work of Jirí Georg Dokoupil.

Decades ago, the German-Czech artist developed a method with which he can capture soap bubbles on canvas.

He is one of the representatives of the young savages of the eighties.

"Untitled" is from 2019, but the now 68-year-old has not lost his unbridled nature.

He lets the soapy water mixed with color pigments and glue float onto the canvas and fixes it.

Like puddles reflected by innumerable rainbows;

oval kaleidoscopes, available for 47,000 euros.

Another work of a moment catcher.

also read

Wagner in the logic hole: "Siegfried" at the Bayreuth Festival

"Everyman" in Salzburg: the festival starts with Verena Altenberger and Lars Eidinger

Design classic: chair by Alvar Aalto.

© sleep

In general, you feel a little happier in the sun-drenched gallery, which can celebrate art with many people again after the Corona-struck exhibition openings of the past few years.

The doors to the Hofgarten are thrown open, joie de vivre and summer feeling in this place, which the National Socialists once misused for their propaganda.

The furniture that the Finnish architect and design legend Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) once developed in such a visionary way matches the fresh wind that blows through the rooms.

Upstairs are some of Aalto's chairs, sofas, armchairs.

Today we are used to these curved wooden forms, spoiled by the idea thieves Ikea and Co. But you have to imagine how this reduced design must have seemed to the public 90 years ago.

Between all the heavy

ornate oak furniture, innovators like Aalto created something completely new.

Who has probably already sat on the armchair 403 (4800 euros)?

Who ate, drank, argued, laughed and sang at Table 915 (9800 euros)?

Of course you can buy the cheaper Ikea version.

But if you buy antiques, you always buy the memories that are inscribed in the wood.

Sit down, pause, pause briefly, and then onward, whirling on and on in the dance of life.

inscribed in the wood.

Sit down, pause, pause briefly, and then onward, whirling on and on in the dance of life.

inscribed in the wood.

Sit down, pause, pause briefly, and then onward, whirling on and on in the dance of life.

“everything is sculpture” in the Vogdt gallery in Munich, Galeriestrasse 2. Mon.-Fri.

12-6.30 p.m., Sat. 12-2 p.m. and by appointment.

You can find more information here