(Zürich 1965–lives and works in Zurich)

Untitled. 2001.

Oil on canvas.

Signed, dated, numbered and with directional arrow on the reverse: Denzler 2001 1044.

120 x 160 cm.

Provenance: Corporate collection Switzerland.

The Swiss artist Andy Denzler is one of the most high-profile artists in the German speaking world and beyond. His works are present in American, Asian as well as European museums and collections. Attending the School of Applied Arts in Zurich between 1981 and 1985, he specialised in lithography and poster printing techniques. With the support of Swiss cultural funding bodies and foundations he worked as visual designer and organised cultural events in Zurich and the surrounding area. From 1999 he attended the F+F Schule für Kunst und Mediendesign in Zurich, the University of California in Los Angeles and the Art Center of Design in Passadena, before he completed his Masters in 2006 at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London.
From the mid 1990s, acrylics and oils determined Andy Denzler’s work. The present works belong to his first period, works known as the “Abstract Paintings”. Around 2005 he began his blurred photorealist series, on which he still works today.
On the large format canvases, he works the mostly light and earthy colours with an impastoed multi-layered technique. The individual surfaces are almost monochrome, yet a strong dynamism holds sway in each colour field. Beneath the prominent layers of colour, the viewer perceives pigments of the neighbouring colour fields, as with skilled restraint in the horizontal movement of the spatula and the brush, the artist succeeds in creating a wonderful interplay of different textures and colour nuances. The white colour fields are a recurrent feature in his early work, as if the artist seeks in the light nothingness the sum of all colours.