Norbert Kricke Lot n° 39

Norbert Kricke Large area railway 1964 Stainless steel Approx. 138 x 520 x 2 cm. On metal plinth 1 x 45 x 62 cm. - With slight signs of age. The present work will be included in the catalog raisonné in preparation by Sabine Kricke-Güse, Berlin. Provenance Acquired directly from the artist; private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia Exhibitions Münster 1980 (Westphalian State Museum for Art and Cultural History Münster and Westphalian Art Association), Zurich (Kunsthaus), Reliefs, Form Problems between Painting and Sculpture in the 20th Century, Ausst.Kat., p.214 with ill. Bonn 1969 (Bonner Kunstverein im Rheinischen Landesmuseum), Studio Rheinland, Norbert Kricke und seine Schüler, Ausst.Kat.Nr.2, p.34 Avignon 1969 (Palais des Papes), L'Oeil Ecoute, Exposition Internationale d'art contemporain Sonsbeek 1966 (city center), Internationale Beeldententoonstelling, exhib.cat.no.127, o.p. with ill. Kassel 1964 (Orangerie), Documenta III Literature Jürgen Morschel, Norbert Kricke, Stuttgart 1976, p.68 with ill. The sculptor and draftsman Norbert Kricke is an individualist whose work defies clear classification; his sculptures can be attributed neither to Informel nor to Minimal Art. He depicts movement in space with minimalist and completely independent means and finds radical, seemingly weightless solutions for this task, which are equally clear and poetic. After the colorful minimalist "Raumplastiken" with simple, closed lines from the early 1950s, he moves on to the "Bündelungen," in which balls of bent steel wires radiate out from a center in various directions. Parallel to this, from 1955/56 onwards, the group of works called "Flächenbahnen" is created. In them, bundles of steel rods are systematized. Shifted against each other in their longitudinal orientation, they are aligned next to each other as a closed surface. With the same formal consistency that already characterizes his three-dimensional, open spatial sculptures, Kricke thus now channels the kinetic energy in a two-dimensional, hermetic wall. In its material dominance, it evokes a completely different, heightened effect. Instead of an explosive movement from the center of the "bundles," the dynamics in the "surface trajectories" take place on a uniform trajectory that nevertheless points to infinity: "The movement on a broad trajectory and in the high speed of the straight lines has the effect, as it were, of a full-sounding, euphoric impulse. The view meets the core zone formed by the light-collecting melting traces of the soldering points of the rods and is moved to the left and to the right into space; and this movement on many lines of the same direction has a completely different force than a movement radiating only in one line. One could also consider the 'plane track' as a wall, where the stability is cancelled out by the horizontal train of movement." (Jürgen Morschel, Norbert Kricke, Stuttgart 1976, p.68). The number of surface paths created is very limited. As is usual in other groups of Kricke's works, it includes a wide variety of size dimensions. The "Große Flächenbahn" offered here was exhibited at documenta III in 1964, the year it was created, together with Kricke's famous spatial sculpture "Große Mannesmann". It is exceptional in its size and effect and is only surpassed by the "Große Flächenbahn in zwei Ebenen" (1957/59) on the facade of the Kleines Haus of the Musiktheater im Revier, Gelsenkirchen.