Tadeusz. Figure

With the exhibition »Tadeusz. Figur.« (Tadeusz. Figure.), Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art presents the work of the painter Norbert Tadeusz (1940–2011) for the first time with a solo exhibition in Vienna. The exhibition is a collaboration with the estate of Norbert Tadeusz, with whom the gallery has worked closely since 2016.

In 1961, the then 21-year-old Norbert Tadeusz moved from the Werkkunstschule in his hometown of Dortmund to the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, which was about to become the (at least temporary) center of the avant-garde in (West) Germany. At that time, the protagonists of the German Art Informel movement led the painting classes. At that time, the group ZERO reconceived art from scratch and celebrated their first international successes. At this time, the greatest German »new thinker«” Joseph Beuys, entered the scene, which he would soon turn into the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie. Tadeusz eventually ended up in his sculpture class after trying Gerhard Hoehme and Joseph Fassbender’s classes, unnerved by the dogma of abstraction (briefly even toying with the idea of becoming a sculptor).

During this time, Norbert Tadeusz opted for representational, realistic painting. Whether to the sneering comments of his fellow students (Polke, Richter, Palermo, and others) about whether he was thinking yet or still painting, to his professor’s expanded concept of art, or to all subsequent discourses and trends, which only accept figurative painting—if at all—as a medium for conceptual approaches or at best sociopolitical statements, he replied defiantly and confidently with the slogan: »I am not an artist, I am a painter.« In this sense, his art is always one thing: a celebration of painting itself.

Norbert Tadeusz admired the old masters, especially the ItalianRenaissance artists, the g...

In 1961, the then 21-year-old Norbert Tadeusz moved from the Werkkunstschule in his hometown of Dortmund to the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, which was about to become the (at least temporary) center of the avant-garde in (West) Germany. At that time, the protagonists of the German Art Informel movement led the painting classes. At that time, the group ZERO reconceived art from scratch and celebrated their first international successes. At this time, the greatest German »new thinker«” Joseph Beuys, entered the scene, which he would soon turn into the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie. Tadeusz eventually ended up in his sculpture class after trying Gerhard Hoehme and Joseph Fassbender’s classes, unnerved by the dogma of abstraction (briefly even toying with the idea of becoming a sculptor).

During this time, Norbert Tadeusz opted for representational, realistic painting. Whether to the sneering comments of his fellow students (Polke, Richter, Palermo, and others) about whether he was thinking yet or still painting, to his professor’s expanded concept of art, or to all subsequent discourses and trends, which only accept figurative painting—if at all—as a medium for conceptual approaches or at best sociopolitical statements, he replied defiantly and confidently with the slogan: »I am not an artist, I am a painter.« In this sense, his art is always one thing: a celebration of painting itself.

Norbert Tadeusz admired the old masters, especially the Italian Renaissance artists, the grandmasters of modernism and also a handful of contemporaries. He never shied away from referring to these role models—to varying degrees of obviousness—in his own works; on the contrary, he founded his work in a profound analysis of art history. Not as an epigone, but as a craftsman who skillfully used and carried on the traditional techniques and achievements of art history for himself. Figure and space, perspective, color, light and shadow—the parameters of our visible reality were also the parameters of his artistic work, which he explored anew with each new image.

Composition always came first for him, only then did the subject follow. Spaces, bodies, things, even everyday trivial matters—a pair of shoes under the bed, a light reflection on the wall—in his pictures everything could turn into a visual sensation. Norbert Tadeusz knew about the magic of painting. And he knew that painting does not have to be reinvented, forced into concepts or discourses in order to astonish, to stimulate contemplation, and to have an effect.

In more than 50 years of artistic work, Norbert Tadeusz has created an extensive oeuvre of which only certain aspects can be appreciated in detail in a gallery exhibition. Tadeusz. Figur. is restricted to one of perhaps the most fundamental aspects of the artist's work: body and space. With nudes, interiors, and still lifes from a total of 40 years, the exhibition is able to offer a comprehensive overview of how style and technique developed in Norbert Tadeusz’ work.

From the beginning, the depiction of the human body, or more precisely the female nude, has been a focal point in the artist's oeuvre, provoking many a scandal in the early years of his career. The bodies often seem poised in unnatural positions, hanging from the ceiling on ropes, time seems frozen, the perspectives yielding sometimes extreme views. But for Tadeusz, nudity was more of a heroic formulation (framed in every century since Greek antiquity), an existential view of humankind, which he saw as a whole. This also included the erotic, but he never let it become an end in itself.

The art historian Klaus Wittkamp writes: »[...] the bodies that assimilate all color shades and light reflections. Individuality, specific location, or current events are irrelevant. Tadeusz is concerned [...] with the relationship of our physical existence in space, and he is concerned with the basic conditions of this existence. He is concerned with pure painting, which only then creates the body. [...] For Norbert Tadeusz, the surface of the skin is like the surface of the picture. The skin becomes the canvas onto which he projects his body. Flesh and soul become the raw material for the experience of being human. Bodies emerge that turn against the isolating force field of space. Tense, suspended bodies whose motionlessness or foundering seems to be a condition for mankind's gaze on itself. For Tadeusz, the body is an indication of life, evidence of the emptiness, the transience, and the fullness of life.«

Tadeusz constructed space in his early works through strongly differentiated color fields, nevertheless revealing with this his preoccupation with abstract contemporaries. Even though he continued this technique in his late work, in later works spaces also start to be created from a diffuse interplay of color and light, the contours blurred, as if viewed through half-closed eyes or originating from a fuzzy memory. Even the empty spaces do not seem to represent concrete places, but instead explore the painter’s ways of grasping the visible world, our reality. Color—light—space.

And yet: even if Tadeusz coyly claimed that he only paints what he sees, that philosophy does not interest him, his works are more than mere depictions of reality, more than a showcase of his technical finesse. »The surface of the picture is the painter Norbert Tadeusz’ world, the image—as an independent cosmos—his idol. In engaging with contemporary and past art, he creates his images, introducing new moments, motifs, motivations, and emotions by observing his surrounding reality, thus creating paintings of strong emotional and formal power, of physical presence that everyone experiences immediately, and of symbolic meaning that has to be worked out. Nothing is gifted, but a lot is given [...].« (Hans Albert Peters)

Norbert Tadeusz (1940–2011) was born in Dortmund and studied at the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie under Gerhard Hoehme, Joseph Fassbender, and Joseph Beuys from 1961 to 1966. His first institutional solo exhibition took place at the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf in the Ehrenhof in 1970 and was followed by numerous solo exhibitions at German institutions. In 1982 he participated in the Venice Biennale and later exhibited in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Since 1992, the Museum Insel Hombroich has housed the Tadeusz Pavilion, which was specially built to display his monumental paintings. In addition to his artistic work, he was a professor at the Kunsthochschulen in Münster, Karlsruhe, Berlin, and Braunschweig. Norbert Tadeusz died on July 11, 2011 in his studio in Düsseldorf. Most recently, there were highly-regarded exhibitions of his work at ESMoA (in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), El Segundo, USA, and the Faurschou Foundation in Hong Kong, China.