Ralf Altrieth (1966) - M & M - 2 pièces

Ralf Altrieth (Heilbronn, 1966).

Ink paintings on melamine-faced wood, 'M & M', 2021

24 x 30 cm each

Set of 2 artworks, ready to hang

SOLD by: Recodier Art - agent, France

DOCUMENTATION :

A dated and signed certificate of authenticity is included.

DESCRIPTION :

Signed on the back 'Ralf Altrieth' with a black marker.
Marked 'RA21' on the front, in black ink.

These two black-ink paintings on a light support form a free diptych, united by the same gestural script and a radical economy of means. Each composition is built from a few simple shapes, drawn with a confident, direct gesture, in which the line becomes at once contour, sign, and figure.

One recognizes hybrid silhouettes, halfway between character, animal and symbol. The bodies are reduced to the essential: a raised arm, a jagged mouth, a form standing or toppling. The drawing oscillates between humor and strangeness, with a spontaneity that recalls automatic drawing or outsider art, never yielding to disorder.

The stark contrast between the ink’s black and the light background emphasizes the graphic force of the whole. Each painting can be viewed separately, but their joint presentation strengthens a game of correspondences: reversal of poses, echoes of shapes, variations around the same visual vocabulary.

Sold together, these two works form a small autonomous pair, both playful and incisive, in which drawing functions as an immediate form of writing, free from any imposed narrative.

Ralf Altrieth (born in 1966 in Heilbronn, Germany) is a German painter and musician living in France since 2006. He has been expressing himself for more than thirty years through a plural artistic practice, which includes painting, drawing, linocut, installations, sculpture and photography, as well as contemporary music and jazz.

Very early drawn to the visual arts, he takes private lessons with painter Georg Schaible at the age of 14, before joining the Nürtingen Academy of Fine Arts from 1987 to 1989. In parallel, he discovers and practices the saxophone and jazz from the age of 20.

The career of Ralf Altrieth is defined by total artistic freedom: from his early days he has claimed an autonomy of creation that is expressed through a wide diversity of media and artistic languages.

He has lived and worked in several European cities — including Berlin, Freiburg, Erlangen, Paris and Venice — before settling permanently in the south of France, where he develops his practice.

Ralf Altrieth has exhibited in numerous galleries and cultural venues in France and abroad, including the Hartmut Beck Gallery in Erlangen, MAC Paris, the Galerie Théo de Seine in Paris, Galerie N5 in Montpellier, the Château d’Assas, and other art spaces. His works are in private collections in Europe and beyond.

In addition to his visual practice, he is the co-founder of the music label Meta Records and has collaborated with many musicians, often incorporating music as a source of inspiration into his visual work.

His work is frequently described as living at the intersection of gestural expressionism, neo-expressionism, and lyrical abstraction, where line and color function as a form of writing that explores movement, spontaneity, and intuitive narration.