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Fritz Köthe

25, 1979

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Fritz Köthe

New World, new art. The Americans were quick to claim Pop Art, but European artists had their own spin to give this uniquely late 20th Century genre—painter Fritz Köthe among them. Like one of the movement’s better-known American figures, Köthe also went on to work in illustration and advertising after art school and used those influences to develop a signature visual style around 1960, but Köthe’s bold canvases are set apart by something distinctly their own.

Born in Berlin in 1916, Köthe’s early life and working years mirrored some of his home country and city’s most tumultuous—and this sense of chaos, the restructuring and reordering of the German mid-century experience, is laid bare across every one of his bright and celebratory works. Widely considered the most important German Pop Art figure, this post-modern surrealist with a West Berlin edge has held a special status with collectors as one of those yet-to-be-uncovered secrets since his 2005 death, but certainly not for much longer.

New World, new art. The Americans were quick to claim Pop Art, but European artists had their own spin to give this uniquely late 20th Century genre—painter Fritz Köthe among them. Like one of the movement’s better-known American figures, Köthe also went on to work in illustration and advertising after art school and used those influences to develop a signature visual style around 1960, but Köthe’s bo […] more

25, 1979

An offset lithography on Bristol paper, Fritz Köthe’s 25 shows off some of the artist’s most enduring iconography in a stunning juxtaposition of warm tones and cool blues and greens. Once called probably the only artist to find a direct aesthetic link between Käthe Kollwitz and Playboy by Monopol Magazin, here Köthe’s uniquely surrealist take on pop art blends a female mouth and a race car into a cohesive, simultaneous expression of flamboyant consumer culture and a decidedly somber, ambivalent attitude—and yet, as always, breaks down this would-be dichotomy into a vivid celebration of modernity.

Like all of the artist’s works dating after 1960, 25 finds its intention in the very purposefulness of its dadaist, bricolage aesthetic. Created to resemble layers of ripped paper straight out of a magazine’s pages, Köthe’s “painted collages” demonstrate a rarely-seen level of aesthetic commitment, making Fritz Köthe and this edition a perfect choice for anyone looking to begin or expand a collection based on some of contemporary art’s most important themes.

An offset lithography on Bristol paper, Fritz Köthe’s 25 shows off some of the artist’s most enduring iconography in a stunning juxtaposition of warm tones and cool blues and greens. Once called probably the only artist to find a direct aesthetic link between Käthe Kollwitz and Playboy by Monopol Magazin, here Köthe’s uniquely surrealist take […] more

Purchase Edition

Fritz Köthe
25, 1979

Size:
30 x 40 cm

Material:
Offset lithography on Bristol paper

Edition:
300, signed and numbered

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