K.R.H. Sonderborg – a Portrait
by Bettina Ruhrberg
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K.R.H. Sonderborg
Berlin 1987
Photo: Manfred Hamm
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"I think the location is not unimportant for painting. The
powerful current, the sea, the harbor with its mechanical structures, the
ships one sees here, large and passing by almost noiselessly, dots
appearing and disappearing on the water's mirrored surface, are the daily
impressions that keep turning up in my paintings. Apart from this, I'm
interested in everything that conquers space. It's only one small step
from ships to planes to jet aircraft and rockets – high speed, and style."
Kurt Rudolf Hoffmann, born in
Sonderborg, Denmark in 1923, officially adopted the city's name in 1951 to
avoid being identified as a German artist following the war; these were
the apt words he used to describe his work's frame of reference, which,
despite certain things it has in common with the works of other proponents
of the Art Informel movement, is nonetheless entirely unique. It is always
the perception of outside reality that sets Sonderborg's creative process
in motion, traces of which remain visible in his painting.
At the
beginning of his artistic career, the technoid constructions of Hamburg's
harbor or
main train station appear on the canvas as cagelike grids of overlapping
lineaments and calligraphic signatures. Later, other impressions of the
big city arise, triggered by lengthy sojourns in Paris, London, or New
York. As an eighteen year-old,
Sonderborg was arrested by the
Gestapo and interred for his anglophile style of life in Hamburg's
subcultural milieu; railroad bridges, staircases, and grating continue to
inspire the artist to this day, as well as everything mechanically
rhythmical, including acoustic impressions.
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Untitled, 1977
©Walter Bischoff
Galerie,
Stuttgart and Berlin
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His father was a jazz musician and painter, hence jazz
played a central role, along with environmental sounds. Another catalyst
for image finding are newspaper clips discovered by chance and deriving
from politically controversial or violent contexts: the Electric Chair,
weapons, and, throughout the eighties, scenes of
German terrorist groups. With this method of working,
Sonderborg not only refutes the thesis that informal painting is a
notation or projection of purely subjective perception, but also its
alleged distance to reality and its lack of political potential.
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Untitled, 1977
©Walter Bischoff
Galerie,
Stuttgart and Berlin
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The final form a painting takes is often preceded by long
phases of searching in which the artist waits for his respective
surrounding to have an effect on him; then, he records this, either in a
spontaneous, yet highly concentrated act of dynamic movement or in
contemplative drawing. The results are primarily black and white
compositions, some of which contain energetic red shapes. "For me, making
a painting has always been a matter of life and death," as Sonderborg
himself describes the painting process. Another time, he stated: "profound
peace and high velocity are the polarities my life operates within: rapid
action and a passive reception for what is still to be discovered –
movement and peace merge in the painting process to create instinct."
7.VI.56 17.03.-17.41, 1956
©Walter Bischoff Galerie, Stuttgart und Berlin
Ever since the early fifties and his first sojourns in Paris, where he came
into contact with the French
Tachism movement and American
action painting, Sonderborg has been increasing the dynamics of his
compositions by employing the diagonal. The space represented now seems to
slip away, giving rise to associations with flying, rockets, and
explosions –
Otto Hahn once spoke of Sonderborg's sense of vertigo. Form is shown in a
state of high-speed becoming. This is a feature that connects Sonderborg
to the American action painters far more than to his European colleagues
from the
informal field. Remnants of gesticulations remain in the paintings. The
spontaneous application of paint in wide sweeps of the brush, spots, and
sprays leaves behind glazed traces; the artist often lays the canvas on
the floor and uses quickly-drying egg tempera instead of oil paint to
avoid running. The paint is spread around the surface using spatulas,
squeegees, pieces of iron and steel, windshield wipers, and razor blades.
Traces of wiping, smears, and scratches enliven the painting's rhythm,
rendering visible the time implicit in the painting.
Untitled, 1975
©Walter Bischoff Galerie, Stuttgart and Berlin
The structural form of
Sonderborg's paintings is the result of a confident combination of the
conscious and unconscious, physical and mental, inner and outer
perception. The tense pictorial surface, with its deliberately placed
fields of drawn action on the one hand and the large empty surfaces on the
other evokes associations to "life's endlessness, emptiness, primal power,
and flow," testifying to Sonderborg's proximity to the world of Zen
thought.
Bettina Ruhrberg is an art historian. Her article
was published in
"Kunst des Informel", Wienand Verlag, 1997.
Translation: Andrea Scrima
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