In his evolution as a painter, Raimund Girke was initially influenced by the gestural-rhythmic abstraction of Informel. From the mid-1950s he developed an almost monochrome pictorial language reduced to just a few tones, which initially resulted in an intensive examination of the colour white in particular. Therefore, his work can be assigned to analytical painting, which avoids to depict anything. His painting is "fundamental", his works the result of an "autonomous painterly process", he always emphasized. In search of order, Girke analyzed colour layering, colour movement and structure by allowing his painting to result entirely from the technique and the process. It is not the liberated gesture that interests him, but the disciplined rigor and factual statement. Concentrating on the intrinsic value of colour plays a key role, as Girke formulated in a kind of poetic manifesto as early as 1974:
“Colour as matter that is tangible and visible.
Colour not as an indication of something, but as something that is there.
Colour that changes in nuances and can hardly be experienced in the barely Visible, in the barely tactile.
Colour as something still and silent.”
