Ackermann, Max

Description:

Berlin, 1887 - Unterlengenhardt, 1975
100 x 90 cm, R.
"Diptychon Blau", 1963. Oil and tempera on canvas. Signed and dated "15. Okt. 1963" in coloured chalk on the reverse of the stretcher.
Galerie Döbele, Stuttgart.
Collection Monika and Horst Bülow, Leonberg, acquired there in 1987.
Exhibition:
"Große Kunstausstellung München", Haus der Kunst, München 1964 (reverse with exhibition label).
"Max Ackermann 1887 - 1975. Zum 100. Geburtstag", Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1987, no. 118 (with full-page colour fig.).
Max Ackermann, one of the most consistent advocates of abstract art in Germany, conceived his practice as a visual counterpart to musical composition. Early shaped by Adolf Hölzel and in close exchange with Bauhaus artists, he developed a language in which form and colour, freed from representation, act as carriers of rhythmic order - joining visible harmony to spiritual dimension.
The paired works "Diptychon Blau" and "Diptychon Rot" (both 1963) are among the most impressive statements of his late phase. Each is based on a large, seemingly monochrome field treated as a pulsating pictorial space. Into this Ackermann sets fine linear tracery, small geometric signs, and accented colour islets that condense like musical notes into a score of colour.
"Diptychon Blau" unfolds a quiet, almost meditative effect. The saturated, profound blue opens a realm of stillness and inner focus, within which the delicate lines and small colour accents appear like gentle impulses or breaths.
By contrast, "Diptychon Rot" asserts a glowing, vibrating plane whose radiance is heightened by sparing contrasts in blue, yellow, and black. Whereas blue evokes contemplative depth, red generates energetic presence and immediate appeal - dynamic, near-eruptive, a picture of movement, passion, vitality.
In their juxtaposition Ackermann’s program becomes especially clear: colour is an autonomous force that, beyond depiction, opens psychic and spiritual experience. Blue and red, calm and motion, inwardness and expressivity form a complementary polarity sustained equally by harmony and tension.
These works show Ackermann at the summit of his mature art - decades of inquiry into abstraction, rhythm, and the idea of a colour symphony distilled. They are not only autonomous paintings of great chromatic intensity but also documents of a thought that understood abstract painting as the expression of a universal order.