GER LATASTER 1920/2012

OIL ON CANVAS BY GER LATASTER 60X80CM. FROM THE FAMOUS FACCETTI GALLERY IN PARIS

After studying at the School of Applied Arts in Maastricht and at the "Rijks Académie" in Amsterdam, he made a first trip to France (Brittany and stay in Paris) as a scholarship holder from the French government. Returning to Holland, a first exhibition in 1952 at the gal. by Eendt (Amsterdam) relates it to the generation of Lyrical Abstraction. His paintings soon become veritable, very colorful puzzles (the Valley, 1958, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum), whose elements are reduced little by little (Idylle, 1959, id.) to finally explode (Grand Rouge, 1962). From 1960 to 1978, the Paul Facchetti gallery (Paris) presented his works on numerous occasions. Attracted for a moment by pure gestures, he made large splashes of color appear on his canvases (Nuitcharged, 1965), but, since 1966, he has tended to recreate a three-dimensional space, in acid tones, by the introduction of figurative elements: wheels, lemons (Fruit Fields, 1968; Unloading Lemons, 1969). From 1973-74, in his works he used large sheets of vinyl, sometimes translucent, sometimes amalgamated with large flat areas of color.
In 1983-84, he presented, with great dramatic evocative force, in large vertical canvases, objects (flags, palettes, human elements) taken from an expressionist material (le Bain, 1987). In 1987, he painted two large canvases for the ceiling of the central staircase of the Mauristhuis in The Hague: the theme was the Fall of Icarus. Since 1984 he has been a professor at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in Amsterdam. His work was the subject of an exhibition in 1985 at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. Lataster is notably represented in Amsterdam (Stedelijk Museum), The Hague (Gemeentemuseum), Vienna (Museum of the 20th Century), New York (M. O. M. A.) and Paris (M. N. A. M.).

Ger Lataster is a painter like no other, perhaps the last of the more or less abstract expressionists. A stormy painter who has a sense of excess. In Paris, he was forgotten, although he was first recognized there thanks to the Facchetti gallery which, in the 60s and early 70s, regularly presented his works. In his country, the Netherlands, where William Sandberg, the director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, introduced him, he is famous and recognized.

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