Untitled
circa 1963

signed and dedicated Mit Bleistift Für Anja on the reverse
casein on cardboard plate

23.5 by 16.5 cm.
9 1/4 by 9 1/4 in.

This work was executed circa 1963.

Footnotes

Provenance
Collection of the artist, Dusseldorf
Gift from the above to the present owner in 1980

A seminal protagonist in the German post-war art scene, Konrad Lueg is better known as Konrad Fischer, the legendary gallerist who represented artists such as Carl Andre, Bruce Nauman, Thomas Schütte, Sol Lewitt and Robert Ryman to name but a few. Having attended the Düsseldorf Academy, where he studied under Karl-Otto Götz until 1962, Lueg, took his mother's maiden name as an artist. Around 1963, Lueg alongside fellow classmates Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Manfred Kuttner, founded the Capitalist Realist movement, the West German version of British and American Pop Art, to critique the rise of American capitalism, the growing commercialization of the art market and bourgeois values in West Germany. The group appropriated the iconography of mass media, caricaturing consumer culture at the time of the West German 'Wirtschaftwunder' and famously invaded retail spaces as part of their practice. Paintings would feature cars, socks, chocolate, a kitschy idealization of Neuschwanstein Castle and as seen in the present work, the humble sausage, a theme also portrayed by Roy Lichtenstein at the same time in America.

In the legendary 1963 Living with Pop performance, Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg invited visitors to a Dusseldorf furniture store where they were seated on pieces of furniture from the store's inventory, placed on pedestals as works of art. They wore suits and the daily news played in the background. In the Kaffee und Kuchen happening in 1966, Lueg invited friends and colleagues to have coffee and cake, this time in the important Alfred Schmela gallery in Düsseldorf. To challenge the perception of art galleries and what constitutes an artwork, Lueg had covered the entire space in his own wallpaper and Gerhard Richter showed a portrait of Schmela himself during the event.

Solo exhibitions of Konrad Lueg's work have been held at Konrad Fischer Galerie, Berlin (2019); Greene Naftali, New York (2019, 2013); Herbert Foundation, Ghent (2018); Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain (2010); Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent (2000): and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, New York (1999). Lueg's work has been featured in significant group shows including Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age (Museum Brandhorst, Munich, 2015); International Pop (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2015); and Living With Pop: A Reproduction of Capitalist Realism (Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 2013; travelled to Artists Space, New York, 2014), among others. His work is in the permanent collections of museums such as the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Kröller Müller, Otterlo, The Netherlands; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Städel Museum, Frankfurt; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Saleroom notices

We are grateful to Konrad Fischer Galerie for their assistance in cataloguing this work.

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KONRAD LUEG(1939-1996)Untitled circa 1963

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Irene Sieberger