A sunset on the Mediterranean: Geometric palm trees rise to the horizon, pyramid-shaped stones protrude from the water.

Rudolf Kügler leads us to a seemingly untouched beach in his painting “Untitled” from 1958 (7900 euros).

The Berlin-born artist was repeatedly inspired by the ocean.

In drawings and watercolors such as “Station for a Sea Mark” (7900 euros) or “Iberia IV” (4200 euros) he captures the play of light and color on the high seas.

He acquired the notions for it while traveling on the Moroccan coast or in Italy, Norway and Spain.

The Mediterranean island of Ibiza became a special place of inspiration for him.

Kevin Hanschke

Volunteer.

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The Berlin gallery Zellermayer is now celebrating in an exhibition the multifaceted oeuvre of Rudolf Kügler, who would have celebrated his hundredth birthday this year, and is bringing together more than thirty works on canvas, collages and sculptures.

In his first phase of work, Kügler created imaginary worlds of images between abstraction and figuration, painted mystical temples, exotic plants and chimeras.

With technical precision

The jazz bars and nightclubs in West Berlin inspired him to create dynamic paintings in red, black and yellow, pictures like “Fließend” (2500 euros), in which the lines are drawn so quickly that they seem to vibrate.

His artistic role models shine through: the surrealism of Max Ernst, the abstract geometries of Paul Klee, the colors of August Macke and Franz Marc.

But also minimalist sculptures made of wood are part of Kügler's work, colored in white, blue or red (2600 to 4900 euros).

As the son of a carpenter, he worked on his sculptures with precise craftsmanship.

The material again came from the oceans: Especially after storms and thunderstorms, Kügler looked for wooden planks from crashed boats and other driftwood on the coasts.

The resulting sculptures became the motifs of his collages.

Kügler developed a special technique for this: he tore poster paper thickly glued on top of one another in many layers from construction fences, detached the layers and arranged them into three-dimensional compositions.

A more pronounced tendency towards abstraction

Kügler's career began in 1946 at the University of Applied Arts in Berlin-Weißensee. After moving to the western part of the city, he studied at the University of Fine Arts. In 1956 he was appointed professor for email there, and soon he was head of the class for free painting. In 1959 he took part in the second Documenta in Kassel. Despite the response to the collages he showed there, he did not want to part with his pictures. He held the art professorship for three decades, which made him financially independent. That is also one reason why his works have so far hardly appeared on the art market.

It is a “stroke of luck” for her, says gallery owner Carsta Zellermayer, who is the first to honor Kügler in a comprehensive retrospective.

She showed parts of his oeuvre at the Positions art fair earlier this year.

In addition to the fine arts, Kügler was also interested in architecture.

He designed facades and houses.

In his late work there is a more pronounced tendency towards abstraction.

The forms merge into huge color structures, and from 1995 onwards, bright azure blue dominates his paintings, as in the acrylic painting “Blue Hour” from 2000 (2950 euros).

In one of the last pictures shown, “Abstract”, the boundaries between shapes and colors seem to be blurring (4500 euros).

Rudolf Kügler, the passionate border crosser, died in 2013 shortly after returning from his last trip to Ibiza.

100 years of Rudolf Kügler: Sculptures - Pictures - Collages,

Berlin, Galerie Zellermayer, until the end of November.