Wolf Vostell
Wolf Vostell (1932-1998), born in Leverkusen, Germany, lived and worked in Berlin and Malpartida de Cáceres, Spain. A pioneering figure of postwar European art and a founding member of Fluxus, he was an early practitioner of Happening, video and installation art. In the 1950s, he developed the concept of Dé-coll/age, using torn posters, fragments of mass media and everyday objects to disrupt familiar images and confront the realities of contemporary society.
Vostell was also a central figure of Kapitalistischer Realismus, which he developed in Düsseldorf in the early 1960s together with Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Konrad Lueg and Manfred Kuttner. Drawing on the visual language of consumer culture and mass media, the artists developed a critical response to the realities of postwar West Germany. Television, cars, advertising and other symbols of mass culture became recurring elements in Vostell’s work, often combined with themes of war, political violence and German history. His practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, performance, video and printmaking.
Wolf Vostell
Drei Haare und Schatten
1968
Colour silkscreen with collage elements of cotton balls, wool and synthetic hair on paper, 60 × 82 cm. Edition limited to 90, signed and numbered.
Wolf Vostell’s edition Drei Haare und Schatten (1968) combines a stark photographic image of a helicopter with brightly coloured graphic interventions and physical materials. Three strands of synthetic hair extend across the image, while small balls of cotton and painted marks interrupt the black-and-white photograph, creating a tension between the mechanically reproduced image and the tangible elements added to its surface. The helicopter motif had already appeared in Vostell’s work the previous year.
The work exemplifies Vostell’s concept of Dé-coll/age, in which fragments of mass-media imagery are disrupted, overlaid and transformed to challenge the authority of the original image. By combining the photograph with everyday materials and graphic interventions, Vostell turns a seemingly documentary image into a layered and unsettling visual object.
EUR 4,500
