Emil Schumacher

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Overview

GG-4/1997, 1997

Gouache on laid paper
56 × 75 cm
Signed and dated
Provenance:
Estate of Emil Schumacher
Literature:
Hans Gercke, Anselm Riedl, Christoph Zuschlag (Hrsg.), Emil Schumacher: letzte Bilder, 1997-1999, Ausst.-Kat. Heidelberger Kunstverein, Köln 2000.
Achim Sommer (Hrsg.), Emil Schumacher: Werke aus sieben Jahrzehnten, Ausst.-Kat. Kunsthalle Emden, Bielefeld 2001, Abb. S. 101.
Alongside the colours red and blue - the modern triad of primary colours - yellow is one of Emil Schumacher's preferred colours and one that defines many of his paintings. In 1962 he even described yellow as his "favourite colour",(1) and in 1992 his yellow paintings as his "favourite paintings".(2) The artist associated a mixture of danger and seduction with yellow: "It has an indescribable charm, one thinks of poison, it smells sweet, it flatters like moss, and one overlooks the otter lying curled up in it. Unknown danger. Socrates' hemlock must have been yellow."(3)
The basic tone of the gouache "GG-4/1997" is dark, mysterious, but not threatening. The black, implied arch shape is reminiscent of a gently undulating landscape in the dark. A few amorphous white spots of colour as well as orange and yellow linear shapes form bright, cheerful colour abbreviations, some of which are reminiscent of characters. Together with the orange-yellow primer, which has been scratched into the dark colour substance of the surface in some places, they suggest the emergence of light. The theme of the work is not the dominance of the dark, but the power of yellow, of light. (Anette Brunner)

1 Emil Schumacher, Farben und Einfälle (III), in: Emil Schumacher, Leben in der Malerei, Gespräche und Texte, ed. by Ernst-Gerhard Güse, Ostfildern 2008, p. 25.
2 Emil Schumacher, "Der Erde näher als den Sternen", 1992, conversation with Michael Klant and Christoph Zuschlag, in: ibid. p. 86.
3 Emil Schumacher, Colours and Ideas (III), in: ibid. p. 25.