Günther Uecker (1930 Wendorf) (F), Nail', 1989

steel sculpture, height 180 cm, in the lower part of the nail inscribed 'UECKER', one of 100 copies, published by Galerie Waßermann, Munich partially superficial scratches, partially corroded, Copy of the confirmation by Günther Uecker (2014) attached

Günther Uecker is considered one of the best-known living and still creating German artists. He studied at the art academies in Düsseldorf and Berlin. Already in the late 1950s, Uecker found a form of design in nails and made them his expressive compositional element. On boards, wooden planks, tree stumps they were nailed and partly whitewashed, enabling him to work out space and movement. He assembled them in both dynamic and strictly symmetrical arrangements to form moving masses and formations or, as here, presented them in single forms. In 1961 Uecker joined the ZERO group and worked together with Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. The central question of the ZERO group is that of art itself. Is art only meant to be depicted? It is precisely this question that must be overcome! The aforementioned artists have done revolutionary work that continues to resonate in contemporary art to this day. We are pleased to offer in this auction a larger-than-life single nail made of steel. Standing on the head of the nail with the tip of the nail rising up, it is detailed with grip grooves and created with a height of 178 cm. Through the nail as sculpture, Uecker translates the main element of his artistic language itself into a form of its own - a form of immense size considering the actual size of a common nail. A small nail that is usually hammered or driven in to fasten, hold together or construct things is not shown here. Rather, the artist's method and the accompanying means of his art are brought into a sculptural form: the nail itself. So it is not a matter of depicting a nail here, but of representing his own artistic work, within a sculpture.