Provenance: Private collection, Southern Germany
Literature: Cf. Stephanie Fiedel / Katja Szymczak, Horst Antes. Catalog raisonné of paintings 1976 to 1983, vol. 5, no. 1981-5, p. 135


Horst Antes is one of the most important protagonists of the new figurative painting in post-war Germany. The painting style of the former pupil of HAP Grieshaber goes from vehemently thrown color structures, leaning on the gestural style of the Infor-mel, from 1960 gradually into his Maja representations and culminates in the development of his picture invention of the "Kopffüßler". From then on, this artistic figure occupied him in numerous variations and modifications as well as in various artistic techniques. In the work "Paar" (Pair), created in 1981, Antes also understands his figures in a figurative sense as pictorial manifestations of signs reduced to the essential. In a stage-like composition, the couple mentioned in the title is placed squatting or crouching in the center, with the right, male figure busy building a house-like construction around the left, female-looking figure. The house, on the one hand a traditional symbol of protection and security, could on the other hand be interpreted in this picture, by the fact that the woman is virtually measured out and fitted into it, in a figurative sense as a confinement restricting freedom.