GRAPHIC ART GALLERY

ACTION PAINTINGS - 1960s

ABSOLUTE ABSTRACT ART

MO's abstract paintings are free of all realistic imagery. Space and perspective appear through movement of colour, lines and forms. Like luminous primeval beings. A world of imagination arises, creating a macro or micro cosmos, depending whether you look through a telescope or microscope.

MO believes a law of movement guides everything - a spatial order (Harmonia mundi). His creations travel in one's imagination, beyond the painting's border, into the unknown, into eternity. The viewer has to use all their imagination to follow these forms into the depth and space of MO's paintings. From an early age MO sought the unknown. To paint in pure abstract style was a natural succession.

"It is difficult to step out of the conventional, the "known". It is the joy of venture, it is the danger, the risk which forces one to think".

BIOGRAPHY

1939	Born in Munich, Germany.
1959 - 61	Studied art, focused on drawing, perspective, still life and nude, at Volkshochschule Munich.
1962 - 64	In depth study of abstract art with Prof. Rolf Cavael, an associate of Kandinsky, who is recognised as the "father" of abstract art.
1964 - 65	Travelled and painted in Australia, the South Sea and USA. First solo-exhibition in Sydney.
1966 - 69	Painted and worked in Yugoslavia, Venice and Austria.
1970 - 72	Lectured abstract painting and founded experimental gallery for modern art in Johannesburg, South Africa.
1973	One year study tour from Capetown to Munich which encompassed all of Africa.
1974	Lived in Ibiza, the artist colony of Spain.
1975 - 80	Managed his own advertising agency in Germany.
1981	Emigrated to Australia.
1981	Founded the Graphic Art Gallery.

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

"Abstract Expressionism" originated in a movement by international artists who wanted to free the artwork of all rules of classical painting. In traditional painting existing forms are copied on to canvas. Since the invention of the camera art has lost its "copy" justification. Various styles emerged from surrealism to abstract where artists could express a new found creativity.

The absence of an objective leads first exclusively to a self characteristic form, eg. triangle, square, circle etc., which will be broken up in a further step into an informal object. What's left or rather what's originated are traces of the previous forms, an abstract form.

INFORMAL - TACHISM - PURE ABSTRACT

The above three expressions are descriptions for "absolute art" - part of abstract expressionism. Like Richard Wagner's idea of the absolute music, absolute art is the liberty of any objective relation. Similar to composing a piece of music, the "pure" abstract artist creates space, lines and forms from an inner code, an inner tune to rhythm and harmonie. This process of creativity out off the inner unknown has almost spiritual quality. INFORMAL OR PURE ABSTRACT art is completely free of any object or form, as we recognise it in the real world. The painter creates new forms, new beings! The boundless freedom in such a painting event becomes pure creativity.

The viewer must engage in a meditative level away from intellectual-analytical perception, a level through which the artwork has moved during its creation. Only then it is possible to understand a pure abstract painting and touch the artist's inner sound on a free flight of his sensual experiences.

ACTION PAINTING

In the sense of American "Action Painting" the painter can wander artistically inside the artwork, using his body and arms expressing himself. Action painter "Jackson Pollock's work reflects the obsession with the own inner life. By a leap of insight he developed the idea of painting as a pure psychological event, supposedly eliminating the gap between the subjective world of the artist's thinking and feeling and the objective world of paint and canvas". (Art in Context).

THE IMPORTANCE OF MOVEMENT

In Asia "movement" has a long tradition as an important criteria for judging art works. One of the oldest criteria of Chinese aesthetic are the rules of painting, manifested by the critic "Hsieh Ho" in the fifth century: "Spirit - Rhythm - Life - Movement" (ch'i - yun sheng - tung). He explains that brush and paint trace every motion of the hand, reacting to any friction. The movement must be in full swing, because hesitation can immediately be seen in the arising form. Speed, force and rhythm of the event will be noticed in the result. The lines confer their origin. Their vitality results from the energy of its beginning.