GÜNTHER UECKER

During the late spring of 2020, Uecker embarked on a series of blue-and-white paintings—five of whichwill be featured in New York—distinctive for their use of watercolour and paint on canvas on a grandscale. The medium of watercolour has long been an integral part of the artist’s oeuvre—usually employed,however, in small format works on paper during his frequent international travels—to convey hisresponses to specific landscapes through colour and abstraction. The Lichtbogen series was inspired by onesuch cycle of works, painted after witnessing the blue sky, sea, and unique natural environment of thePersian Gulf’s ancient Strait of Hormuz.

Returning to his Düsseldorf studio, the expansive Lichtbogen paintings followed as an enduringsummation of his experiences at Hormuz. Uecker describes his inspiration in his poetic passage: ‘Over theclearance, / the visions of the Arabian / desert island shimmer / in the green waters, / waters shining inthe / entire colour spectrum, / visions of a biblical land, / a land of prophetic revelations. / An arc of lightpainted, / flowingly, on paper, / like a scar, a vein of life itself, / amid the rapture of the colours— / a linepainted, / like an arch, / an arrow ascending out.’ With Lichtbogen, Uecker harnesses the clarity, fluidity,and brilliance of his chosen medium, as well as scale, to convey the ethereal quality of light and water.Through the resonance of the arc, evoked in the circular motion of his brushstrokes, these natural sourcesbecome the inspiration for, in Uecker’s own words, ‘painting, in jubilation / all that is wondrous / all thatexists / in this world.’

Günther Uecker: Arc of Light coincides with Günther Uecker: Lichtbogen. Entwürfe zu Kirchenfenstern imSchweriner Dom, on view through June 2, 2024, at the Goethe Museum Düsseldorf. The exhibition presents,for the first time, 13 preparatory window designs Uecker created for the Schwerin Cathedral in Germany.Originating from the Lichtbogen paintings, the stained-glass windows—each measuring over ten metershigh—will be fully installed in the cathedral by the fall of 2024. The commission continues Uecker’sexploration of light and shadow in public spaces, including his 1998–1999 collaboration with the Germannational parliament on a room for prayer and reflection in the Reichstag, Berlin. His Schwerin Cathedralproject places his work in conversation with permanent chapel installations by Marc Chagall, EllsworthKelly, Louise Nevelson, Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, and Pierre Soulages.