GERARD
WAGNER
Through Color to Form
Opening May 16, 2025
"Curtain"
("Vorhang")
24"x36", Watercolor on paper, 1966
You are invited to the opening of Gerard Wagner's exhibition, Through Color to Form, on Friday, May 16 at 6pm. Hans Schumm of the Gerard Wagner Foundation will give an introductory talk at 7pm.
Gallery hours for May: Thursday-Sunday, 1-5pm.
SPECIAL EVENTS:
Talk by Hans Schumm: Friday, May 16 at 7pm
Eurythmy performances: Friday, May 23 at 7pm and Saturday, May 24 at 4pm
Through Color to Form is a rare large-scale public exhibition of the work of Gerard Wagner (1906-1999). Wagner, an German-born English painter, based his art on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), the founder of anthroposophy. This landmark exhibition will feature over 30 of Wagner’s paintings spanning from the 1940s through the 1980s.
With this new exhibition of Gerard Wagner's art, Lightforms continues exploring the influence of Rudolf Steiner on 20th century artists, an endeavor first started when Lightforms exhibited the work of Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) in 2020. Although there are numerous artists that Steiner influenced, Hilma Af Klint is presently among the most well-known artists to have studied personally with Rudolf Steiner.
(To read more about Steiner's greater influence on the 20th century culture and artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Joseph Beuys and Andrei Tarkovsky, please click on this link for an article on Gagosian quarterly.)
Wagner understood color as an “alphabet” and looked for objective principles in the encounter with the Being of color. His innovative, experimental methodology drew on his study of the Training Sketches, which were developed by Rudolf Steiner as a way to explore how color can lead to form. Wagner wrote in 1972. “…The Training Sketches can be regarded as the beginning of a new art of painting, which is in accordance with the development of modern consciousness.”
Wagner’s work is a testament to this exploration of color as an objective language—a medium through which both Steiner and Wagner sought to reveal the hidden rhythms and spiritual forces of the world:
“If one releases color from objects and lives with color,” Steiner wrote, “then it begins to reveal profound secrets, and the entire world becomes a flooding, surging sea of color." (Steiner, quoted in David Adams' article, “The Goetheanum Cupola Reliefs,” Being Human, Summer 2013 from page 39 onwards)
"Man in Nature"
("Der Mensch in der Natur")
Watercolor on wood panel, 1956
Further immersion in Rudolf Steiner’s teachings occurred in 1926 when Wagner traveled to Dornach, Switzerland, to study at the Goetheanum. There, he studied with Henni Geck (1884-1951), a painter and sculptor who had asked Steiner to develop a painting course where objective laws of the spiritual could be learned.
“In response, Steiner created nine pastel “training” sketches that are now used in most introductory anthroposophical art classes. The drawings were scraggly motifs of the natural world—“nature moods,” he called them—and depicted the sunrise and sunset, the moon and the trees," writes Ross Simonini. Simonini continues: “Geck studied and mimicked these sketches and eventually taught them to her own students, including the artist Gerard Wagner, who described them as organisms: “They do not portray, they live.” To work on them, she [Geck] said, was to “unite with their inner essence” and go inward, into moral and cosmic experience. This was a way of training the artist to experience what Wagner called “pure, controlled will activity.” (Wagner quoted in Rossini's article, “Goetheanum: Rudolf Steiner and Contemporary Art,” Gagosian quarterly, Spring 2024)
"Threefolding Human Being 03"
("Dreigliedriger Mensch 03)
Watercolor on paper, 1967
Wagner’s artist journey formally began at age 18, when he joined an art colony in St. Ives, Cornwall in 1924 to study with landscape painter John Anthony Park (1878-1962). Here Wagner first encountered the idea that color held greater significance than form—a theme that would shape his entire artistic career. Wagner also studied at the Royal College of Art in London.
“Wagner's quest as an artist was to arrive at a mode of work that would allow colors to live through him, through his hand, through his brush, to reveal forms generated by the interplay of their relationships yet tempered by his humanity,” explains Peter Sagal from the Gerard Wagner Foundation. “He developed a strict approach - one might call it scientific - to peel personal inclinations from his work in order to arrive at a process that would allow colors to interact through him without impingement. He considered his work a continual study, a kind of laboratory of color experiments.”
"Metamorphosis of the Plant/Archetypal Plant"
("Pflanzenmetamorphose/Urpflanze")
Watercolor on paper, 1967
Gerard Wagner’s archives—housed in both the USA and Switzerland—contain thousands of paintings and worksheets of experimental color research which continue to be a source of inspiration for artists across the world. His unique contribution to art has been celebrated internationally, including at the world renowned Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, where his paintings were shown in 1997.
This exhibition at Lightforms Art Center is presented in collaboration with Rudolf Steiner Library and the Gerard Wagner Foundation.
There will be special events, including eurythmy and lectures, throughout the duration. See the updated program on our website:
www.lightformsartcenter.com/
MORE ABOUT GERARD WAGNER:
Goetheanum homepage:
Sebastian Jüngel|'s article about the comprehensive biography of Gerard Wagner (the book is available from the Rudolf Steiner library):
https://goetheanum.ch/en/news/colour-symphony
Being Human magazine (Summer/2013):
David Adams' article about Gerard Wagner's work with the Cupola Motifs at the Goetheanum (from page 39 onwards): https://issuu.com/anthrousa/docs/bh9-final-web
MORE ABOUT STEINER'S INFLUENCE ON 20TH CENTURY ART:
Gagosian quarterly:
“Author and artist Ross Simonini reports on a recent trip to the world center of the anthroposophical movement, the Goetheanum in Switzerland, exploring the influence of the movement’s founder and building’s designer Rudolf Steiner on twentieth-century artists.” https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2024/02/27/essay-goetheanum-rudolf-steiner-and-contemporary-art/