Lawrence Markey Inc.

Website Press release:

Helmut Federle Drawings 1970s
June–July, 2022

at Lawrence Markey
200 E. Grayson St., No.104
San Antonio, TX

Lawrence Markey is pleased to present the exhibition Helmut Federle  Drawings 1970s, on view June through July, 2022.

This is Helmut Federle’s first solo exhibition at Lawrence Markey.

Helmut Federle was born in Solothurn, Switzerland in 1944.  He currently lives and works in Vienna and in Camaiore, Italy. In a career spanning decades, Federle has become known for large scale paintings that resist easy categorization. Federle’s works on paper represent a significant part of the artist’s oeuvre in like manner.

For our exhibition Helmut Federle selected 15 drawings, created between 1974–1979, and never before exhibited. Mediums include acrylic, pencil, ink and watercolor, on either paper or board. They measure close to standard 8 1/2 x 11 inch letter paper. These finished compositions recall images of mountain peaks, signs and landscapes. Stylistically the drawings explore modes of mark making, geometry, reduction and addition, precise versus painterly; always, as the artist says, “strongly guided through nature.” Notably, in the five year span between 1974 and 1979 Federle traveled extensively across North Africa, parts of Asia and the USA; viewing exhibitions by American artists including Agnes Martin, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman. Federle was creatively prolific throughout these travels, saying in a 2021 interview “drawings were never meant as sketches for the paintings, they were pieces by themselves, defined pieces. . . .Drawing was a way of expressing on limited dimensions. . .expressing inner experiences, inner need, in different mediums.”₁

Excerpts from a 2022 essay entitled IMMEDIACY AND HELMUT FEDERLE by Richard Shiff,₂ contributed to the exhibition:

"A generalization: in Federle’s art, sensation comprises thought, and thought comprises sensation. His drawings and paintings are thought experiments, the sensations of thinking. The drawings are inchoate ruminations, speculations, musings, projections. They are happenings, events. They reflect thinking conducted with materials and forms rather than words and concepts."

"When Federle draws, the object is mind as much as matter or body. His thoughts on climbing are poetic, and his images express these sentiments better than would words. His meanings are not specific, he says, but vaguely psychological—matters of feeling. Such emotional conditions remain nonverbal and unnamed. Federle represents the ineffable."

The gallery is located at Pearl, 200 E. Grayson St., No.104, in the Full Goods building.
Find No.104 along the breezeway running parallel to Grayson Street.

Please contact Sandra Weatherhead to request further information or images: 210-228-9966 or info@lawrencemarkey.com

1.Parra & Romero, “Basics on Composition/Informal Multitudes”,” Vimeo video, 18:48, Parallel Uploader, October 23, 2020, https://vimeo.com/471405091,7:54.
2.Richard Shiff is the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art, and Director, Center for the Study of Modernism, at the University of Texas at Austin.