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Artists from A-Z Rolf Winnewisser

*1949
  • Nächtliche Szene (1988)
    Nächtliche Szene
    Artist: Rolf Winnewisser Dating: 1988 Type: Painting Material: Acrylic and chalk on cotton Measures: 186 x 260 cm Acces / purchase date: 1990 Inventory number: 0602
Between November 1987 and November 1988, Rolf Winnewisser painted a series of 23 "picture cloths" in the studio of the Landis & Gyr Foundation on Carpenters Road in London. The "Nocturnal Scene" is the tenth painting in this series, which represents a high point of emotional density and sensual presence in Winnewisser's work process. The artist describes his working method as follows: "Reality becomes fiction, fiction becomes reality, which means that there is no compact unified understanding of reality, but that of a constant dissolution, deformation, reshaping, displacement."



The elements with which Winnewisser structures the picture surface are always in the process of condensing into signs that refer to something outside themselves. This quality of Winnewisser's language of signs, expressed in openness, fragility and vulnerability, is one of the keys to understanding the poetic structure of his art: Winnewisser's paintings can be compared to a message in a bottle. The message contained in the bottle can only be deciphered with difficulty by the finder, as the ink has faded in many places. The letters and word fragments he can make sense of, however, are enough for him to imagine a multitude of possible stories. The viewer of Winnewisser's "Bildtüchern" experiences a similar situation: the more open, curious and associative he approaches the pictures, the more the "inner sound" of Winnewisser's pictorial world is revealed to him.

Baloise Art Commission/Public Relations, January 1998