Literature: Lothar Romain, Winfred Gaul. Catalog raisonné of the paintings. 1962-1983, Vol.II, Düsseldorf 1993, No. 190, ill. p. 117, large color illustration p. 68

In his artistic career, Winfred Gaul created works with a great joy in experimentation, which, from a developmental point of view, were never aimed at a generally valid goal. He began his painterly explorations after studying with Manfred Henninger and Willi Baumeister at the Stuttgart Academy in the Informel style of the 1950s. The untitled work he created in 1959 stands as an early document of his early impulsive-gestural phase. In continuously superimposed brushstrokes, the overpaintings merge into one another in such a way that, viewed from a distance, an almost monochrome surface emerges. On closer inspection, the gestural traces and overpaintings can be read like a close-meshed network structure. With the exception of the painted areas in the rectangular corner of the picture, the entire rest of the picture surface is left out, in a restrained white tone. Thus the dynamic statement of the painting is heightened and the work becomes a painterly force field. With the consequence of excluding everything narrative or interpretable, the artist deliberately renounced any titles as early as 1955. By turning away from the traditional pictorial statement in favor of form, Gaul belongs to that following of artists who were committed to free form and achieved a previously unheard of autonomy of the painting process as well as the pictorial means. "Painting is a traditional medium with a limited radius of possibilities. By painting, I consciously accept the limits of painting. Within these limits, however, I know no taboo." (Winfred Gaul)