Provenance: Collection H.-J. Müller, Tenerife

Subtitled "Rotes Palimpsest" (Red Palimpsest), this oil painting from 1958 belongs to Winfred Gaul's initial period of work, which was influenced by Informel. His lifelong search for new means of expression is also evident in his unconventional approach and unusual use of pictorial means. The linear principle of form appears again and again in Gaul's work. Even in later phases of his work, he returned to these artistic investigations and the detailed preoccupation with lines and their expressive possibilities. In the years between 1957 and 1958, he increasingly produced works that he called "palimpsests," the ancient Greek word for manuscript pages made of parchment that were scraped off and reused because of their preciousness. In a figurative sense, this term is used to describe surface structures that have disappeared and the process of rewriting itself. Gaul transfers this term to painting, and indeed the line structures of this group of paintings give the impression of having been repeatedly painted over in an elaborate process of creation until an artistically satisfactory final result was achieved.