Provenance: Reinheimer Collection, Sindelfingen

Literature: Wilhelm Gall, Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Sammlung Reinheimer, Stuttgart 1983, pp. 214-215 with ill., p. 241

With his works Georg Karl Pfahler gives his own answer to the art of "Abstract Expressionism" in America. He is one of the artists from whom decisive international impulses emanated, especially in the 1960s. The experience gained under his teacher Willi Baumeister at the Stuttgart Art Academy had a lasting influence on the young Georg Karl Pfahler and developed his sense of the unity of color, form and space. The 1981 work "Espan No. 54" is a prime example of his mature work phase and impressively shows how radically Pfahler developed from his initial, still block-like paintings of his "formative" work phase to such increasingly geometrically arranged and sharply delineated color surfaces. With this consistent advance of his "painting of hard edges," Pfahler was able to advance to become the only German interpreter of "color field painting" and a pioneer of "hard edge" of international standing.