Gotthard Graubner experimented with possibilities for expanding the pictorial space of the conventional panel painting into the space since the early 1960s, to in this way create a light and colour surface that is not panel-like at all, instead expanding aimlessly but vigorously and pulsing into the space.
Graubner in fact began with expressionistic and geometric-abstract paintings but abandoned this path in around 1962, increasingly searching for other forms of expression. The first cushion paintings were created, in which the painting was stretched over a layer of synthetic wool, thus leading to an embodiment and ultimately to a spatialization of the colour. The application of the paint itself, although it remained in the same chromatic range, could never be called “monochrome” in Graubner’s case – iridescent and clayey surfaces are characteristic of his painting. There is nonetheless no brushwork and no “signature”, and just as little a thickness of the paint.
