About the work

Heinrich Siepmann also did not allow himself to be pinned down to a once-found canon of forms in his late work. The painter, born in Mülheim an der Ruhr in 1904, received his initial artistic training at the Folkwangschule in Essen from 1925 to 1927. After he had copied Old Masters in the context of a scholarship in museums in Heilbronn, Munich and Kassel, his path led him to the Staatsschule für angewandte Kunst (state school for arts and crafts) in Nuremberg. While Siepmann initially turned to abstract art after surviving involvement in the war and as a prisoner of war, a turn toward art inspired by concrete/Constructivist art with a geometric vocabulary of form took place soon after. And, although his work is characterised by geometric area constellations, the painterly aspect also remained important and present to him. Heinrich Siepmann combines the constructive language of form with lyrical expression in a unique manner.

In the work C 03 2001 here, the bright elements of form shift into the foreground, which partially consists of inserted collage elements, but are also sometimes purely painterly elements. And although the constructive polygonal forms predominate in the works of Siepmann, it becomes especially clear in the collages, the extent to which the artist rejected a cool Constructivism. The painterly expression of the works is always preserved. The background is held by a both multi-layered and varied conglomerate of various forms and colours, whereby each individual element exists in a balanced relationship with all other pictorial elements. Heinrich Siepmann is also able to equally address both the mind and the emotions of the viewer by way of the observing comprehension of the entire composition with these highly diverse works.