From Surface to Space – Gesture, Structure, and Material in the Work of Charlotte Posenenske

Charlotte Posenenske is among the most striking figures in postwar German art. Her work, developed over only a few years (1956–1968), is marked by a rare combination of consistency and radical transformation. In that short time, she moved from gestural painting to serial image concepts, and finally to modular, industrially produced reliefs and sculptures. Comparing her early palette-knife paintings with the adhesive tape works, and later the paper and metal reliefs, reveals a nuanced progression—from expression to system, surface to space, craftsmanship to industry.

Palette-Knife Paintings – Gesture and Structure on the Surface

Posenenske’s artistic starting point lies in the so-called “Spachtelbilder” (palette-knife paintings) of the late 1950s, created on paper or fiberboard. She applied thick paint using a palette knife, often in muted tones—black, gray, earth colors. Despite the seemingly expressive technique, the compositions are controlled, clearly structured, often with an almost architectural quality. Her focus was less on subjective expression in the vein of Art Informel, and more on the investigation of surface, rhythm, and order. This balance between gesture and structure laid the formal foundation for all her subsequent work.

Adhesive Tape Works – Serial Order Replacing Painterly Gesture

In the early 1960s, Posenenske made a decisive break: she abandoned painting and began working with industrial adhesive tape, applying it systematically to paper or cardboard. These adhesive tape works reflect a conscious withdrawal of the artist’s hand. The painterly gesture of the earlier works is replaced by a serial, constructive visual language. Yet the interest in rhythm, repetition, and structure remains. These works mark a shift toward a more objective and systemic form of practice.

Paper Reliefs – Transitional Forms Between Gesture and Industrial Aesthetics

The paper reliefs represent a pivotal transitional stage in Posenenske’s artistic development. Here, she begins to expand the picture plane into physical space. By folding, creasing, or layering paper and then spraying it with paint—typically in two tones, applied unevenly—she creates sculptural forms with soft color transitions and a vibrant surface. Although the spray technique suggests an industrial process, the irregularities and color gradations retain traces of gestural expression.

Formally and conceptually, the paper reliefs are closer to her palette-knife paintings than to her later modular works. They are not serial components but autonomous pictorial objects—more like paintings in space. Their significance lies in the way they open the pictorial surface toward spatial articulation, while still preserving a visible artistic intervention. The expressive qualities of the early works are transformed but not erased.

Series B – Objectivity, Modularity, and Social Openness

With the metal reliefs of Series B, Posenenske reaches a radical turning point in her work. These consist of industrially manufactured sheet metal elements that can be assembled and rearranged in various configurations. The works are not conceived as unique objects but as open systems—potentially infinitely reproducible, anonymous, and collectively handled. The artist’s hand disappears entirely. In its place emerges a democratic, socially oriented conception of art that resists exclusive aesthetics and institutional fixation.

Series B—and similarly, Series A—stands for a form of art that is no longer self-contained, but open to change, participation, and shifting contexts. The earlier gesture is now fully absorbed into industrial clarity and structural openness.

Development Without Rupture

Despite the apparent differences between palette-knife paintings and metal reliefs, a deep internal continuity runs through Posenenske’s work. The principles of structure, rhythm, and repetition, already present in her early paintings, unfold across different levels: from surface to space, from the individual to the collective, from the object to the process. Her paper reliefs represent a crucial step in this progression—not modular systems, but sculptural images that carry within them both the gestural legacy and the industrial future of her work.

Posenenske’s artistic trajectory is not only formally compelling but also reflects a profound reflection on art, society, and production. She demonstrates how expression and clarity, gesture and system, subjectivity and anonymity need not be opposites, but can instead productively inform and transform one another.