INDOC. Documentation centre about Art and Nature

CDAN opens Erwin Bechtold exhibition

The pictorial work of Erwin Bechtold often extends beyond his paintings to directly involve the place where they are exhibited. Based on this kind of approach, Bechtold has designed a specific and rather unconventional exhibition for the CDAN. Instead of presenting a retrospective of his entire career, it highlights specific works, key pieces that Bechtold uses to contrast his current work with his early output and with pieces created at different points in his long artistic career.

The works are drawn from the artist's own collection and other private and public collections. All are in perfect harmony with the space and lighting created by the architecture of the Centro de Arte y Naturaleza – an auspicious encounter between Moneo and Bechtold that gives rise to a unique union of art and architecture.

Bechtold’s work is characterised by constant balance or imbalance. What prevails is always the moment of disturbance that breaks the equilibrium between opposites. After taking on board the principles of the Informalist movement in the 1950s, Bechtold introduced geometrical elements into his work in the 1960s. His creative development eventually led him to create pictorial compositions in which he gives expression to the tension between the hardness of Constructivism and the freedom of the Informalist school. Bechtold, a painter interested in exploring material art and form, has developed in a balanced way. Rather than following trends, he always maintains his own personal style. Angles, lines, surfaces and plastic space are central to his prodigious output, and his work, presented now with characteristic elegance, demands an effort of the gaze, inviting viewers to reflect deeply on what is most essential.

The resulting exhibition is a balanced construction that highlights different ways in which the artist has explored non-figurative form and the composition of pictorial space. It also reveals how he has sought to go as far as possible in synthesising his expressive language. Bechtold has pursued a logical process, taking a rigorous approach to his work and demanding much of himself as an artist. As a disciple of Léger and a friend of Sert and Coderech, Bechtold has always been concerned with integrating his work in its architectural setting. The best example of this is his work on the façades of Mannheim’s Reiss-Museum in 1988. Through his use of order and gestural language, Bechtold has become an analyst of form and space.

This exhibition emerges from José Beulas’ admiration for the quality of Bechtold’s material painting. He was fascinated by the work entitled 90-4 Thema: Winkel/Fläche/Raum (Theme: Angle/Surface/Space) and unhesitatingly added it to his collection in April 2005.  Beulas shares the pleasure Bechtold derives from material, and there is a mutual recognition in the way they use this essential element. This exhibition fulfils a wish both men share and extends the boundaries of the Beulas-Sarrate collection.

Erwin Bechtold, now over 80, continues to work with the same vitality and rigour as always. Bechtold is a multidisciplinary artist who has divided his energy equally between painting, graphic design, and works linked to architecture, all on the basis of a unifying philosophy in which the collision of reason and intuition is central.

More information

• Erwin Bechtold exhibition – CDAN web site  (available in English)

Source: Texts, CDAN; photograph at top of page, Erwin Bechtold, XXIV-20 Grosser Winkel mit Rot, 2004; acrylic diptych on canvas.

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