Georg Karl Pfahler: COLOR AND SPACE

​Arts Editor: Christopher George 

Georg Karl Pfahler (1926-2002) was an internationally recognized artist known for his vibrant colourful work and abstract geometric painting style. Focussing on the dynamic between shapes with a deeper relationship between space and color, Pfahler became a thought leader and one of the first European artists to simultaneously work in action, Color Field and hard-edge painting.

Initially working as a sculptor, Pfahler was encouraged to focus on painting by his teacher Willi Baumeister. Influenced by the tradition of European art, he quickly simplified his paintings to adopt an innovative abstract geometric painting style, with block-like forms on crisp backgrounds appearing on his early canvasses in 1962. In 1965, Pfahler’s career achieves the international stage with the exhibition Signale in Basel (Switzerland), a prestigious group show in which his work was showed alongside Al Held, Elsworth Kelly, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski. The following year, having gained his status as one of the leading European artists of his generation and supported by the curator Barnett Newman, he presented his first show in the United States, at the Fischbach Gallery in New York.

For his entire career and until his death in 2002, Georg Karl Pfahler focused on the relationship between shape, space and color. Pioneer of the Color Field painting movement, his work can be found in the permanent collection of the Daimler Contemporary and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (Germany), the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (Germany) and the MoMA in New York (USA), amongst others.

QG GALLERY is pleased to announce GEORG KARL PFAHLER – COLOR AND SPACE: the first exhibition of his work in Belgium since 1964.

QG GALLERY