André Butzer

Butzer’s painting embodies the recurring extremes of history as emblems of human existence. The childlike Friedens-Siemens (Peace-Siemens) is vision itself, beholding the past and future with eyes wide open, as if to witness the industrial devastation and envision a utopian peaceful existence. The Woman resides at the center of Butzer’s painting. She is life force personified, mediating between the so-called world of the real and the imaginatory place in space that is NASAHEIM, where all colors are preserved.

The figures and their one- or many-colored surroundings are animated by the very same agitation. Everything is interwoven and solidified. Every layer, block or patch of color coheres with the directions of the canvas. Contrary to their opulent dispersion, all expressive marks mutually resonate with one another and thereby create the delicate balance of the painterly whole.

For the first time painted on canvas, two paintings spread out individual dabs or spots of color. They modulate and shift the primary colors, red, yellow and blue together with added flesh tone. They lay bare the building blocks as well as the coloristic and historical heritage of Butzer’s paintings, which are neither merely figurative nor merely abstract but complete beings of the unison and presence of colour.

Butzer will have solo presentations at the Salon Dahlmann / Miettinen Collection, Berlin, 27 April – 27 August 2023 and the Kebbel-Villa | Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Schwandorf, 11 June – 23 July 2023, as well as a major retrospective at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 8 May – 10 September 2023.