(Zurich 1965–lives and works in Zurich)

History. 2013.

Oil on canvas.

Signed, dated, titled and numbered on the reverse: #2193 History Denzler 2013.

81 x 70 cm.

“I’m principally concerned with addressing time and evoking a narrative through composition, light, and motion. I depict time by applying a filter of blurred movement.” (Andy Denzler)

The Swiss artist Andy Denzler is one of the most high-profile artists of the German speaking world and beyond. His works are to be found in American and Asian as well as European museums and collections. Already there have been two important retrospectives of his work: at the Ludwig Museum in Koblenz and the Kunsthalle in Dresden, and he has taken part in the Art Biennales in Beijing and Marrakech and the Kunstforum in Vienna. His works are present in large private and public collections, including the White House in Washington DC, the Museum for Modern Art in Moscow, Denver Art Museum, Credit Suisse, the Burger Collection in Hong Kong and the David Roberts Art Foundation in London.

At the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich Andy Denzler specialised in art lithography and poster printing techniques between 1981 and 1985. With the support of Swiss cultural funding bodies and foundations he worked as a 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 completing his master’s degree at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London in 2006. From the mid-1990s, Denzler’s oeuvre has featured acrylics and oils.

The Swiss artist Andy Denzler moves between abstraction and reality in his works.

The works presented here (Lots 3454-3456) belong to his first creative phase, known as the “Abstract Paintings”. With large format canvases, he works mostly with bright and earthy colours using an impastoed and multi-layered technique. The individual surfaces are almost monochrome, yet there is a strong dynamic to each colour field. Within the prominent colour layers, the viewer is aware of the pigments of the neighbouring colour fields, since with skilful restraint of the horizontal movement of the spatula and brush, he succeeds in creating a wonderful interplay of various textures and colour nuances. The white colour fields are recurrent in his early work, as if the artist is seeking the sum of all colours in the bright nothingness.

Around 2005 Andy Denzler began his blurry, photorealist series, which he is still working on today. "History" wonderfully illustrates his style: he combines nostalgic photorealism with gestural expressionism. He archives snapshots of an event, as if he were pausing a film, in order to draw this into the abstraction. To this end, he creates alternating stripes of immovable details of the image and impastoed brushed bands. Blurred and distorted movements emerge and the image itself appears to sink into the background, creating a distance from the viewer so that the relationship of time is called into question. He also calls this series of works “Freeze Frames” or “Motions Paintings”, which he divides into four groups: “Portraits”, “History Paintings”, “Figures & Landscapes” and “Urban Figures”. He implements these with different techniques: painting, sculpture and drawing.