GA039 | Australian & International Art

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GUNTER CHRISTMANN (1936-2013)
Smoke Green 1971
acrylic on canvas
signed, dated and titled verso:
G S Christmann Jan 71 SMOKE GREEN
168 x 152cm
EXHIBITED
38 Hargrave Street, Paddington, April 1971, cat. no. 9
$15,000–20,000
Gunter Christmann arrived in Melbourne from Berlin in
1959. He and partner Jenny Christmann soon moved
to Sydney and set up a small live-in studio opposite the
National Art School. They quickly became local fixtures of
the Darlinghurst streetscape. Christmann’s self-directed
attitude led him to reject traditional forms of arts training,
preferring to draw from music, art, literature and locality to
inform his practice. Christmann divided his focus across
various mediums including sound work, abstract painting
and drawing. The iconic ‘sprinkle’ paintings such as Smoke
Green, 1971 are amongst some of the most prominent
works within the artist’s oeuvre.
Following his inclusion in NGV’s exhibition The Field in 1968,
Christmann staged a solo show at Central Street Gallery,
Sydney in 1969 selling works to state galleries, the National
Gallery of Australia and writer Patrick White 1 This cemented
Christmann as an integral figure of Sydney’s abstract
expressionist movement and in 1971 he was chosen to
represent Australia at the XI Biennale Sao Paulo alongside
David Aspden.
That same year the philanthropist John Kaldor invited the
renowned Swiss curator Harald Szeemann to Australia with
the intention to curate a show drawn from the avant garde
artists he encountered. In a 14 day whirlwind tour Szeemann
managed astoundingly to meet more than 70 artists.
The curator selected three of the ten works Christmann
exhibited at the Paddington gallery 33 Hargraves Street
(which included Smoke Green, 1971) for the critically
acclaimed group show ‘I want to leave a nice well done child’
held at Bonython Galleries, Sydney and later at the National
Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
The paintings from around this period strongly resonated
with art critics including Elwyn Lynn who wrote an essay on
the powerful presence of Christmann’s lyrical abstractions:
‘The feelings embodied in his work are of the ‘not-quite’
or ‘kinship’ order: they are not quite about joyousness,
melancholy, release, hesitancy or shyness; they are akin to
expansive ease or cautious confrontation. They embody
notions of a veiled life of oblique and subtle suggestions
and of a tremulous untroubled uncertainty. 2 Smoke Green,
1971 requires time and contemplation, the unfocused
nature of the sprinkled paint encourages the eyes to dance
around the canvas - the ephemeral effect is hypnotic and
mesmerizing. This work is an enduring legacy of an artist’s
lifetime meditation on painting.
Sarah Garrecht
1. Gunter Christmann obituary | Simon Barney, 'Gunter Christmann
1936-2013', Art Monthly, Issue 267, March 2014, p. 62
2. Elwyn Lynn, 'Gunter Christmann', in Art and Australia, vol. 10, no. 3,
January 1973, p. 250