Lüpertz, Markus: Shepherd (1986)

Markus Lüpertz is the most important figure of “fierce painting” (heftige Malerei). His art harmonizes tradition with modernism, painting with sculpture, and figurativeness with abstraction. “Whenever you paint something abstract the eye leads you to search for a figurative element, and vice versa,” he said.
Abstracted landscapes, scenes of war and mythology stand in the focus of his paintings, drawn with broad strokes. He builds his sculptures from robust, distorted and exaggerated forms, often adding a coat of colour paint, which is responsible for the expressivity, energy and curious wildness of his works. His sculpted figures seem to be creatures free from gender or social position, indifferent to beauty; a classicism turned into modernism enlarges their humanity to magical dimensions.
The androgynous Shepherd is a beautiful case in point, symbolizing the cultic herdsman of both the pagan Greeks and of Christians. The shepherd stands completely still, like a kouros, holding the young ram entrusted to him: the survival of the community depends on his loving resolve.
Lüpertz’s work is a paraphrase of Picasso’s bronze Man with a Lamb (1943), itself a monument to those left vulnerable in the war.

H. L.