Günther Uecker: Lichtbogen (2020–21) was the artist’s first solo exhibition in Paris since 1968. Lichtbogen constituted a dramatic development in the master’s seven-decade practice with a monumental new body of work, the first of their kind. The radiant paintings vibrated with the energy of their creation, embodying fluidity and light. Collectively, the works found the artist mapping the world within himself as he absorbed and translated the ever-changing experience of life.

“Lichtbogen”
Painting with watercolors
in the vastness of an
ochre-colored desert landscape
on the Persian Gulf.
Water that pours out
from the mountains,
flowing through
an ancient
cultivated environment
at the Gulf. Sweet
river water, marrying with
the Arabian Sea
through the Strait
of Hormuz,
a nodal point
in our history.
Over the clearance,
the visions of the Arabian
desert island shimmer
in the green waters,
waters shining in the
entire color spectrum,
visions of a biblical land,
a land of prophetic revelations.
An arc of light painted,
flowingly, on paper,
like a scar, a vein of life itself,
amid the rapture of the colors—
a line painted,
like an arch,
an arrow ascending out.
Watercolors, ink,
tempera and paste,
mixed on paper
and applied on canvas,
generate through their mixing
—pigments in water—
a streaming border zone.
An electric arc that
guides us into the universe,
traveling along the scar-line of
our injuries, beginning
from a source of life,
source of life’s endangerment,
our precariousness and
our vulnerability. In revolt,
in transgression of that threshold
of a finitude, a vision
from the depths
of our provenance—
the paint guided
in a circle.
The paintbrush, tethered,
traces a line
like a compass,
piercing the act of painting
like an uprising
of the life-force, like
an ejaculationof vital action,
seeking to overcome
an affliction.
Humbly, back in my workshop,
that hermitage for
consciousness,
for inner joy,
painting, in jubilation,
all that is wondrous,
all that exists,
in this world.
—Günther Uecker, 2020