Helmut Günter Weis - The journay to Stavropol
Prof. Dr. Manfred Fath

1998, the painter Helmut Günter Weis, who lives in Birkenau by Heidelberg, Germany, began a cycle of paintings consisting of roughly fifty large paintings titled “The journey to Stavropol". These paintings are based on an experience that left such a deep impression on the artist that he wished to make them last in an ambitious cycle of paintings. Helmut Günter Weis loves horses. While travelling through Russia in the late summer of 1998, he had the chance to former state-owned stud farms. One of them was in Stavropol, located at the northern edge of the Caucasus, where especially thoroughbred and beautiful animals are raised.

In his cycle of paintings titled "The journey to Stavropol", Helmut Günter Weis tries to express the encounter with the much loved horses in their natural environment by artistic means. The large paintings that have been created over the last three years 1 out due to their remarkable wealth of form and colour. The spectrum ranges from informal elements to works in which gestural painting is combined with formal elements. On more than one occasion, he added materials to the colours and used corrugated cardboard in order to intensify their plasticity and to give the painting a three dimensional effect. In many paintings, he uses found objects as reference to reality. By mixing colour pigments with certain binders which her rubs into the canvas, and by adding gleaming aluminium in one painting, he succeeds in creating a du[[ shine that represents the horses' metallic fur.

As a result, Helmut Günter Weis refers to his paintings as mixing techniques. Their formal wealth and the variety of materials used reveal him as an artist who likes to experiment, whose method in the production of his works is always perfectly calculated. This becomes evident in the choice of formats. By using upright formats for the paintings, he succeeds in giving the onlooker the association of stable doors for instance, Weis deliberately uses these different means in order to achieve the desired effect. Helmut Günter Weis' paintings show similar working methods as Antoni Tapies' work, He also mixes his colours with fine sand or similar materials, which he applies to the canvas as paste in order to work in it afterwards. Thus, different kinds of three dimensionality emerge in the paintings. Oftentimes, like Weis, Tapies uses found objects which he introduces as references to reality. Even writing or gestural symbols that resemble writing can be found in Tapies' work. Helmut Günter Weis uses names of places or horses that he incidentally and always inconspicuously integrates in his compositions as a reference to the reality that the paintings refer to.

Even the very first painting of the cycle, created in 1998 (140 x 300cm), characterized by different shades of brown, shows two rectangular forms with conspicuous gestural traces in front of a transparent cloudy background. Due to their colouration and their arrangement, they cause a three-dimensional effect in the picture, The dominating brown shades of the painting represent the memory of the landscape and of the colour that can often be found in horses. By means of these colourations, Weis recalls the archaic character of the landscape, which is also represented by the black lunges worked into the painting. In addition, the hastily written word "Stavropol" is reminiscent of the place, which the painting is dedicated to.

The second painting of the cycle, also created in 1998, high format (260 x 90cm), is dominated by shades of brown as well. It suggests the left side of a stable door, on which the names of horses from a foal's pedigree are hastily written. Formal references, such as the arc segment on the upper edge of the painting or clearly visible horizontal lines also suggest a door.

The paintings of the cycle boast an impressive wealth of form and colour. In addition to paintings in which Helmut Günter Weis works with objective quotes, he creates abstract paintings that determine the onlooker's association or point it to a certain direction. The painting No, 4 for instance, also created in 1998, is characterized by a bright red colouration, which turns to white and yellow in the right lower corner. From the right side, a gesturally painted black wedge with frayed edges is pushed in front of the red background. Due to the contrast of bright red and black, the painter creates the effect of a powerful dynamism. In the case of the cycle's painting No. 7, created in 2000, the effect is similar: A triangular composition is put in front of a bright background of white and yellow shades, calling to mind an abstract silhouette of a mountain.

With his cycle "The journey to Stavropol", Helmut Günter Weis created impressive works, in which he assimilates his encounter with a landscape, its people, but most of all with a breed of horses much valued by him in abstract paintings that allow the onlooker for a whole range of associations. The wealth of forms and colours of these paintings, with which he masters the large formats, is most impressive. Aloisia Föllmer describes Helmut Günter Weis' work very well by saying his paintings, originating from intuition, embody the unity of experimental art and poetry, of powerful self-realization and artistic sensitivity.

Manfred Fath (Kunsthalle Mannheim)

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