Paul Zwietnig-Rotterdam (born 1939),’’nobody knows... Lot 388

Paul Zwietnig-Rotterdam (born 1939),’’nobody knows at what point in life a night bow appears’’, black ink on paper, signed and dated 2015, on the reverse description by the artist, 43,5 x 35,5 cm, Dedication from the Artist to Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840)On February 28, 1982, at the invitation of the Boston Art Society, I gave a lecture on the elements of abstract formalism in contemporary art, using as the central image, radiating the rays of the sublime, the 1810 Night Arch by C.D. Friedrich, who I claimed is a clear pictorial invention, a formal invention that exists only in the imagination and has little or nothing in common with the real of the physical phenomenal world, like the spirals in Van Gogh's sky or the red ones Trees by Mondrian etc. come from the focus on the immediacy of the pictorial object. It is amazing how directly and without hesitation Friedrich holds the edges of the picture together with the white sheet. The image hangs on the white line like a wire. All the contents of the presentation relate to the immediacy of the surface. In addition to the visual parameters that I highlighted in my lecture, it probably always came back to the fact that Friedrich invented the Nachtbogen to keep the picture in a high degree of abstraction, that painting is an art of stillness and invention is that new forms and formal contexts are involved in the development of the world. Immediately after the lecture, which ended at about 10:00 p.m., Rebecca and I got in the car and three hours later we reached our home in North Blenheim. The house stands on a wide plateau on a hill with a deep view of the valley. Left and right the hilly mountain ranges of the Adorandecks. No light far and wide, only stars, moon and everything white covered with snow. We get out of the car and stretch our feet with a few steps up the hill. And as we turn around: a great white streak rises in the firmament, a white arc appears across the valley, stretching from mountain to mountain, just as Frederick depicted in his picture. The white nightbow was there for at least a minute. We didn't know what to say - I secretly said thank you Friedrich - knowing that we received a message from the afterlife. In 1982 I made a nightbow drawing that is now in the Leopold Collection, and oddly enough it was only a year ago that I became interested in the subject again. Although repetitions in art get on my nerves, I have made 5 nightbow drawings so far because "no one knows when a nightbow will appear" and it is interesting that the drawings are different and only have in common the white line that runs above the formal one composition rises. I only told one or two friends about the nightbow event, told it two years ago to the physicist whose name is Humuk and worked for the Atomic Energy Commission, has a PhD from MIT, gave me physics classes. He understood. that the question is not how the white nightbow came about through the moon, but the question why it appeared at the very moment when I was still living in my nightbow lecture and needed the real nightbow in the middle of the snowy landscape. It now only has to be decided, said the physicist, whether this nightbow appeared in my brain or actually in the firmament. But because Rebecca admired the brilliance of the white line in the starry sky and how fantastic it is to be personally connected to the universe, I can humbly report about the nightbow. It was a wonderful event, it was a fantastic gift.