Jurgen Lutz
by Joan Murray
Research Curator,
An Gallery of Ontario
Jurgen Lutz once met Braque on a train in France and discussed the sunset. Their mutual attraction seems natural because, like Braque. Lutz is a great colourist. His achievement today is based on ten years of study of what colour is and how it reacts as an instrument of delight.
Lutz went to Vancouver, where he had his first show at the New Design Gallery. Because of the lack of stimulus in Vancouver, he later returned to Toronto and has shown at Hart House and the Pollock Gallery. As an artist, Lutz has followed a consistently self-critical path. His explorations began in Vancouver with a series of 120 figurative paintings in which he experimented with colour in a series of serial studies. Back in Toronto, Lutz did another series: 200 paint sketches on odd materials like bed sheets, undershirts or curtain materials. In these abstract works, small, explosive shapes of bright colour battled their way over an excitingly textured surface.
After this, Lutz did a few tentative paintings, his first excursion into large scale work. A magnificent series of collages and gouache drawings followed almost immediately, in which the artist achieved a major status. These collages were crucial to the artist. In them, he attempted to apprehend the subtle and the soft. Indeed, the whole effect of these collages is one of a quiet peacefulness and gentle poise.
Using torn papers of different colours and textures, he set up a pattern of hovering shapes which acted as counterpoint to the main theme, a background of stippled, mottled washes in pearly tones. Light filters up from these works, creating a feeling of delicacy and transient time.
In the collages, it was the small, confined areas where random accidents occurred that most excited the artist, and he decided to expand these tiny, almost dot-like particle areas into larger, more disciplined works. Using a combination of collage and silkscreen and working simply enough, he chose a dot and, extending it, made up a row. Repeated, the rows. along with complex colour variations on the original colour theme, gave off a gentle shimmer. Inevitably, one thinks of Vasarely, an artist whose work Lutz did not know at the time. However, Vasarely's works have a sharper, more sudden impact; Lutz's seem to glimmer slowly into movement. His lyrical colours are very unlike Vasarely's usual striking contrasts of black and white.
Logically too, because of his experiments in collage, Lutz now moved into three-dimensional sculpture and Plexiglas, creating sculptures especially for architecture which look like kaleidoscope fragments on sheets of varying depth wrapped around a wall.
But such abstract works did not satisfy Lutz. He desired a more emotional result and a more personal expression. To attain this, he returned to the image, and specifically, to the female nude, the theme which began his work. His latest works are of a nude in various unstudied poses (out of 200 photos of poses, he considered five or six "right"). Serial, like all of his work, these silkscreens or paintings explore the various colour permutations possible in a single pose through a process of colour separation. He still continues his collage effect by interspersing moulded plastic modules (sometimes complete squares) throughout the works. As he pointed out himself, he uses two different creative approaches, "one more technical and one more painterly and poetic" which together, "show the difference between a surface approach and an in-depth look at the subject." Both components, however, were necessary "to create the tension in the viewer's mind which wilt lead to insight. "The effect is unusually arresting: the viewer finds himself searching for. and discovering, the mood and personality of the nude. Her glance is like an invitation to involvement, and the result, although pastoral and innocent, is extremely erotic. The colour patterns that interested Lutz in his row series continues; now colour combinations burst over the surface of the works in a series of rosettes (close up, the works are totally abstract).
One thinks of Warhol but any comparison only emphasizes Lutz's differences. Warhol's images are closed and impersonal; Lutz's are full of power, sensuousness, and feeling. The result is painterly and monumental. Perhaps too, the feeling involved in these works is not unlike the casually beautiful poetry which Leonard Cohen is writing ? Lutz had this poetry in mind when he was creating these works, and is thinking of using various lines as titles.
Lutz is now also interested in working on film, a proper medium for his ability to project drama and for his tremendous colour sense (he is doing a film just on colour). He has already directed a play and has done the sets for Ryerson's Drama Festival last year: and he will repeat it again for Queen's this year with a very different concept.
by Joan Murray
Research Curator,
An Gallery of Ontario
Jurgen Lutz once met Braque on a train in France and discussed the sunset. Their mutual attraction seems natural because, like Braque. Lutz is a great colourist. His achievement today is based on ten years of study of what colour is and how it reacts as an instrument of delight.
Lutz went to Vancouver, where he had his first show at the New Design Gallery. Because of the lack of stimulus in Vancouver, he later returned to Toronto and has shown at Hart House and the Pollock Gallery. As an artist, Lutz has followed a consistently self-critical path. His explorations began in Vancouver with a series of 120 figurative paintings in which he experimented with colour in a series of serial studies. Back in Toronto, Lutz did another series: 200 paint sketches on odd materials like bed sheets, undershirts or curtain materials. In these abstract works, small, explosive shapes of bright colour battled their way over an excitingly textured surface.
After this, Lutz did a few tentative paintings, his first excursion into large scale work. A magnificent series of collages and gouache drawings followed almost immediately, in which the artist achieved a major status. These collages were crucial to the artist. In them, he attempted to apprehend the subtle and the soft. Indeed, the whole effect of these collages is one of a quiet peacefulness and gentle poise.
Using torn papers of different colours and textures, he set up a pattern of hovering shapes which acted as counterpoint to the main theme, a background of stippled, mottled washes in pearly tones. Light filters up from these works, creating a feeling of delicacy and transient time.
In the collages, it was the small, confined areas where random accidents occurred that most excited the artist, and he decided to expand these tiny, almost dot-like particle areas into larger, more disciplined works. Using a combination of collage and silkscreen and working simply enough, he chose a dot and, extending it, made up a row. Repeated, the rows. along with complex colour variations on the original colour theme, gave off a gentle shimmer. Inevitably, one thinks of Vasarely, an artist whose work Lutz did not know at the time. However, Vasarely's works have a sharper, more sudden impact; Lutz's seem to glimmer slowly into movement. His lyrical colours are very unlike Vasarely's usual striking contrasts of black and white.
Logically too, because of his experiments in collage, Lutz now moved into three-dimensional sculpture and Plexiglas, creating sculptures especially for architecture which look like kaleidoscope fragments on sheets of varying depth wrapped around a wall.
But such abstract works did not satisfy Lutz. He desired a more emotional result and a more personal expression. To attain this, he returned to the image, and specifically, to the female nude, the theme which began his work. His latest works are of a nude in various unstudied poses (out of 200 photos of poses, he considered five or six "right"). Serial, like all of his work, these silkscreens or paintings explore the various colour permutations possible in a single pose through a process of colour separation. He still continues his collage effect by interspersing moulded plastic modules (sometimes complete squares) throughout the works. As he pointed out himself, he uses two different creative approaches, "one more technical and one more painterly and poetic" which together, "show the difference between a surface approach and an in-depth look at the subject." Both components, however, were necessary "to create the tension in the viewer's mind which wilt lead to insight. "The effect is unusually arresting: the viewer finds himself searching for. and discovering, the mood and personality of the nude. Her glance is like an invitation to involvement, and the result, although pastoral and innocent, is extremely erotic. The colour patterns that interested Lutz in his row series continues; now colour combinations burst over the surface of the works in a series of rosettes (close up, the works are totally abstract).
One thinks of Warhol but any comparison only emphasizes Lutz's differences. Warhol's images are closed and impersonal; Lutz's are full of power, sensuousness, and feeling. The result is painterly and monumental. Perhaps too, the feeling involved in these works is not unlike the casually beautiful poetry which Leonard Cohen is writing ? Lutz had this poetry in mind when he was creating these works, and is thinking of using various lines as titles.
Lutz is now also interested in working on film, a proper medium for his ability to project drama and for his tremendous colour sense (he is doing a film just on colour). He has already directed a play and has done the sets for Ryerson's Drama Festival last year: and he will repeat it again for Queen's this year with a very different concept.