Franz Gertsch (1930–2022)

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One last look in the mirror. Perfectly dressed for a night out, the three friends are ready to leave. In the centre is Luciano, wearing snakeskin boots, a long skirt and a fur jacket. To the right is Marina, in a Stars and Stripes blouse and a leather jacket, and to the left Barbara, tucking her shirt into her trousers.

With extraordinary precision and dedication, Gertsch meticulously rendered an astonishing variety of textures. The flokati rug, the parquet floor, the floral curtains, the stack of records, the tray cluttered with countless small objects – every detail was of equal importance to him.

'The scene appears natural and unposed, and the behaviour of those depicted should not betray my presence as a photographer.' Gertsch wrote this in his 1973 artist’s statement Perceiving – Seeing – Photographing – Selecting – Painting. In it, he describes the five stages in the creation of his paintings:

'Experiencing with all five senses. (…) Capturing the fleeting. Capturing life. Abstracting reality onto a visual plane. (…) Selecting source images. (…) (…) Out of hundreds of colour slides, I choose my picture (…). My commitment? Painted life. The sensory presence of people, things and places. Imposing the image on the viewer.'

Gertsch’s paintings of the 1970s reflect the spirit of their age: drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll, and the music of Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and The Rolling Stones. Gertsch himself often listened to music while he painted.

If you would also like to immerse yourself in the music of the period, we recommend our Spotify playlist, specially curated for this exhibition.

By this point, Franz Gertsch was spending around a year on each painting, working eight hours a day. That immense investment of time – his own lifetime – became embedded in his work. His catalogue raisonné comprises just eighty-two paintings, created over a period of fifty-three years. As he himself put it:

'My paintings (…) are my biography.'