Painting as a quest for liberation, as the antithesis of ideology and as an expression of autonomy. These central concepts form the starting point of the works of Erwin Bechtold. Born in Cologne in 1925, the artist ranks among the leading exponents of abstract post-war art in Germany and also Spain, to where he immigrated back in the mid 1950s.

Celebrating his 95th birthday this year, Erwin Bechtold can still be found working in his studio almost every day. To mark the occasion, and in close collaboration with the artist himself, the Museum Küppersmühle is staging a comprehensive retrospective, featuring works from across the past seven decades.

In Ewin Bechtold’s own words, contrasts have been a constant source of fascination for him, and inform every successful image. This manifests itself in the stringent reduction of his palette to black and white, and extends to the deconstruction of geometrical forms. Thus, flowing into his works are the stark contrast between the dazzling southern Mediterranean light and dark shadow, and the inherent tension between geometry and artisanship in the island of Ibiza’s cubic architecture. Work titles such as Discordia describe the system in which Bechtold operates: Order is only there to be disrupted.

The outcome is an oeuvre which commands an enduring fascination by virtue of its artistic rigour, its spatial presence and the vying tension between emotionality and rationality.