Amethyst

Hans-Ulrich Britsche

Info: Perhaps it makes sense to first clarify what the painting of Hans-Ulrich Britsche is not. It is not an appropriation of historical styles, not a retro phenomenon, not a zombie of the classical avant-garde. His light-metaphysical painting, as he himself calls it, could not be further removed from such strategic resuscitations of outdated aesthetics, which contemporary art has continuously experienced since postmodernism. This is due in no small part to the fact that the classical art world, with all its discursive agility, has yet to create a space of resonance for this kind of work. For Britsche’s artistic project is closely tied to an anthroposophical understanding of art—one that, put simply, envisions a pictorial fusion of the material and the spiritual, where the figurative is enveloped by the abstract like a warm coat, without entirely vanishing into it. The formal affinity of such an aesthetic to crystalline Expressionism or certain strands of Cubism and Futurism can be explained by the contemporaneity of anthroposophy’s cult leader, Rudolf Steiner, with these movements. (…) – Moritz Scheper