Winfred Gaul

Winfred Gaul (1928-2003), born in Düsseldorf, lived and worked primarily in Düsseldorf, with periods in Paris, Rome, New York and Antwerp. A major figure of postwar German abstraction, he initially worked within the Informel before turning in the early 1960s towards geometric forms, colour and the visual language of traffic signs and signals. His work was characterized by a continual examination of the possibilities of painting, moving between gestural abstraction, hard-edge compositions, monochrome colour fields and later analytical approaches to form and perception. Although his Verkehrszeichen und Signale have often been associated with German Pop Art, Gaul understood them less as representations of reality than as an attempt to create a new, autonomous visual language.