Jürgen Brodwolf: Changing Figures

Jürgen Brodwolf‘s oeuvre testifies to continuity and consistency. The human figure is a continuum in the artist’s vast oeuvre and appears again and again in various manifestations, and not least in his recently completed works, which we have received straight from his studio for our forthcoming exhibition. Brodwolf has to this day remained true to the discovery he made in 1959, when, reminiscing about the makeshift toys of his childhood, he began to shape empty, squeezed-out tubes of colour into “tube figures” and to integrate them as “Rectified Readymades” directly into his works. The resultant “Figure Typology” has over the years been augmented by numerous different types of figure: lead figures, papier mâché figures, pigment figures, bronze figures, and of course the artist’s drawn and watercoloured figures. All these figures, however, bear a close affinity to the original tube figure.

In “Changing Figures”, the forthcoming exhibition at our gallery in Riehen, we shall be presenting a selection of works that will clearly visualize this development: early “Figure Boxes” from the 1970s, recently reworked paintings from the 1960s and new works from the past two years. The exhibited works will readily enable the viewer to see how Brodwolf’s use of colour has changed over the years. Indeed, this change is the most pronounced change within past decades. While a grey scale dominated the early “Figure Boxes”, Brodwolf’s most recent works feature garish shades of green, blue, red and even orange, these colours being used primarily for the found objects integrated into the works. Coloured fabrics are draped or wrapped around the figures, or serve the figures as supports or mounts, some of them even being edged with spray colour. Not to be overlooked is the forgotten umbrella. Left behind by a visitor to the Brodwolf’s, this reddish orange umbrella has now found its way into a relief featuring papier mâché and tube figures.

Likewise prominent are Brodwolf’s recently realized combinations of old and new, of yesterday and today. As is usually the case with artists, any works left standing around in the studio are still the object of further artistic creativity – they are still the artist’s raw material, so to speak. They are not carefully conserved for posterity, as every art historian, conservator-restorer, gallery owner or collector would do, but are inevitably reworked or even transformed into something entirely new, for only the artist’s most recent works have his full approval. Thus it is that Brodwolf’s older works have now been absorbed into completely new creations. A creative process of recombination, recomposition and augmentation has brought about new combinations between existing canvases and papier mâché figures, or small boxes with tube figures. Appliquéd figures invite altogether new interpretations, while the dating of these works – considering the inclusion of components from very different periods – is now extremely complicated.

“Layers of Time”. This is the descriptive term that Brodwolf uses for those works that bring together elements from different phases of his oeuvre. They furnish an overview of the artist’s creativity past and present, of all the different changes the human figure has undergone down the years. Figures from different periods, for example, crop up in one and the same work and clearly show how they have all evolved from the original tube figure, the prototype of 1959. The latter is neither a fragment nor a torso, for the fact that it has neither a head nor arms is ascribable purely and simply to the shape and property of the “raw material” from which it was fabricated: the tube, as such, is a fully integrated element of the work of art. This armless objet trouvé is shaped into a figure and becomes either an integral part of a work of art or a work of art in its own right. The subsequently evolved family of figures – the lead figures, the papier mâché figures, the paper figures and the pigment figures – likewise follows this canon of form. They are logical derivations from the original tube form.

There are no limits to the artist’s imagination and creativity. His figures appear in ever new variations, ever new transformations: the severity of form featured in the early figure boxes with the original tube figures; the subtlety of figural form in the small, mainly white reliefs and then the extreme colourfulness of form in the large reliefs on canvas.  Combined with such found objects as bones, test tubes or teacups, these tube figures were – and still are being – transformed into “Figure Objects”. Glass-fronted boxes serve as miniature backdrops for staged scenes with objects and tube figures. The contents of these “Figure Boxes”, and also the boxes themselves, are often found objects that have been taken out of their everyday context and transported into Brodwolf’s world of figures. The found objects used by Brodwolf often come from the very personal context of his own home and thus tell us much about his background and about the closeness that exists between his life and his work. Window frames, metal housings or wooden boxes are the limiting surrounds within which figures and objects take their place. Such titles as Jawbone, Test Tubes, The Roller, Test Bench, Railway Station or The Bowl refer either to the incorporated object or to the represented situation or circumstance. The various different components of the works are often out of proportion, as is the case with the tiny tube figures that could never make use of the overly large teacup.